bad people

A man told me once that all the bad people

were needed. Maybe not all, but your fingernails

you need; they are really claws, and we know

claws. The sharks - what about them?

They make other fish swim faster. The hard-faced men

in black coats who chase you for hours

in dreams - that's the only way to get you

to the shore. Sometimes those hard women

who abandon you get you to say, "You."

A lazy part of us is like a tumbleweed.

It doesn't move on its own. Sometimes it takes

a lot of Depression to get tumbleweeds moving.

Then they blow across three or four States.

This man told me that things work together.

Bad handwriting sometimes leads to new ideas;

and a careless god - who refuses to let people

eat from the Tree of Knowledge - can lead

to books, and eventually to us. We write

poems with lies in them, but they help a little.

~  Robert Bly

Morning Poems

the black figure below the boat

We hear phrases: "He made me do it."

"I never wanted that."  The boy's boat gets

Pushed out on the sea, and before long the tidal

Currents guide it from beneath.  He goes to sleep.

He meets a woman, and marries her even though

He doesn't want to.  He says, "It was the current."

But some tiny black figure swims below the boat,

Pushing it.  This man or god works all night.

Then what?  Months go by, years, twenty years.

A lot of water.  The boat hits gravel.

It's an island - the kind where giants live.

"Don't say you didn't want it.  Just get ready."

~ Robert Bly

from Morning Poems

perishable

The nimble ovenbird, the dignity of pears,

The simplicity of oars, the imperishable

Engines inside slim fir seeds, all of these

Make clear how much we want the impermanent

To be permanent.  We want the hermit wren

To keep her eggs even during the storm.

But that's impossible. We are perishable;

Friends, we are salty, impermanent kingdoms.

~ Robert Bly

from Talking into the Ear of a Donkey

 

the blind old man

I don't know why so much sweetness hovers around us.

Nor why the wind blows the curtains in the afternoons,

Nor why the earth mutters so much about its children.

We'll never know why the snow falls through the night,

Nor how the heron stretches her long legs,

Nor why we feel so abandoned in the morning.

We have never understood how birds manage to fly,

Nor who the genius is who makes up dreams,

Nor how heaven and earth can appear in a poem.

We don't know why the rain falls so long.

The ditchdigger turns up one shovel after another.

The herons go on stitching the heavens together.

We've never heard about the day we were conceived

Nor the doctor who helped us to be born,

Nor that blind old man who decides when we will die.

It's hard to understand why the sun rises,

And why our children are mostly fond of us,

And why the wind blows the curtains in the afternoon.

~  Robert Bly

 from Talking Into the Ear of a Donkey

Robert Bly and Friends reviving oral tradition

~ Robert Bly

a home in the dark grass

In the deep fall, the body awakes,

And we find lions on the seashore—

Nothing to fear.

The wind rises, the water is born,

Spreading white tomb-clothes on a rocky shore,

Drawing us up

From the bed of the land.

We did not come to remain whole.

We came to lose our leaves like the trees,

The trees that are broken

And start again, drawing up on great roots;

Like mad poets captured by the Moors,

Men who live out

A second life.

That we should learn of poverty and rags,

That we should taste the weed of Dillinger,

And swim in the sea,

Not always walking on dry land,

And, dancing, find in the trees a saviour,

A home in the dark grass,

And nourishment in death.

~ Robert Bly
from Stealing Sugar from the Castle

art by O'keeffe

looking into a face

Conversation brings us so close! Opening

The surfs of the body,

Bringing fish up near the sun,

And stiffening the backbones of the sea!

I have wandered in a face, for hours,

Passing through dark fires.

I have risen to a body

Not yet born,

Existing like a light around the body,

Through which the body moves like a sliding moon.

~ Robert Bly

from The Light Around the Body

 

people like us

There are more like us. All over the world

There are confused people, who can't remember

The name of their dog when they wake up, and people

Who love God but can't remember where

He was when they went to sleep. It's

All right. The world cleanses itself this way.

A wrong number occurs to you in the middle

Of the night, you dial it, it rings just in time

To save the house. And the second-story man

Gets the wrong address, where the insomniac lives,

And he's lonely, and they talk, and the thief

Goes back to college. Even in graduate school,

You can wander into the wrong classroom,

And hear great poems lovingly spoken 

By the wrong professor. And you find your soul,

And greatness has a defender, and even in death you're safe.

~ Robert Bly

from Morning Poems

.

the green cookstove

A lonely man once sat on a large flat stone.

When he lifted it, he saw a kitchen: a green

Enamel range with big claw feet, familiar.

Someone lives in that room, cooking and cackling.

"I saw her once," Virgil said. "She was Helen's

Younger sister."  Helen's betrayed husband

Sits by the window, peeling garlic cloves,

And throwing crusts to Plymouth Rocks.

We'll never understand this, Somewhere below

The flat stone of the skull, a carnivorous couple

Lives and plans future wars.  Are we innocent?

These wars don't happen by accident - they occur

Too regularly. How often do we lift the plate

At the bottom of our brain and throw some garlic

And grain down to the kitchen?  "Keep cooking,

My dears," "Something good will come of this."

~ Robert Bly

from Morning Poems

a thousand years of joy - the film trailer

the call away

A cold wind flows over the cornfields;

Fleets of blackbirds ride that ocean.

I want to be out of here, go out,

Outdoors, anywhere in wind.

My back against a shed wall, I settle

Down where no one can find me.

I stare out at the box-elder leaves

Moving frond-like in that mysterious water.

What is it that I want? Not money,

Not a large desk, not a house with ten rooms.

This is what I want to do: to sit here,

To take no part, to be called away by wind.

I want to go the new way, build a shack

With one door, sit against the door frame.

After twenty years, you will see on my face

The same expression you see in the grass.

~ Robert Bly 

from Like the New Moon, I Will Live My Life

art by van gogh

what Jesus said

The wind blows where it likes: that is what

Everyone is like who is born from the wind.

Oh now it’s getting serious. We are the ones

Born from the wind that blows along the plains

And over the sea where no one has a home.

And that Upsetting Rabbi, didn't he say:

‘Take nothing with you, no blanket, no bread.

When evening comes, sleep wherever you are.

And if the owners say no, shake out the dust

From your sandals; leave the dust on their doorstep.’

Don’t hope for what will never come. Give up hope,

Dear friends, the joists of life are laid on the winds

~ Robert Bly

from Eating The Honey of Words. New and Selected Poems

a hide

There's a skin or hide between ourselves and our inner being.  And in the West that skin is very thick.  Inside us there's a sea and that sea is your inner life, your spiritual life, and your sexual impulses - everything you've gotten from the memory stores of evolution.  Then there's the outside world made of buildings and automobiles.  And these two worlds can't rub against each other.  It's too painful.  Therefore you develop a hide exactly like a cow develops a hide.  You don't want her guts to rub against the barn.

~  Robert Bly

spoken to Lewis Hyde in an interview

taken here from Robert Bly - In This World

listening to the sitar before dawn

It is not yet dawn, and the sitar is playing.

Where are the footsteps that were so clear yesterday?

Sometimes stones have no weight at all, and clouds are heavy.

To those who want me to change, I say, “I will

Never stop traveling that road which connects

Socrates to the turtle, and Falstaff to the Baal Shem.”

Every sitar note strikes a bargain with the one

Who arranges things. One note says, “A year in heaven.”

The turgid silence says, “Two years under the earth.”

The sitar players are already pulling heaven down,

While we have hardly learned to carry earth.

Perhaps they remember all their errors in loving.

Some say that Ganesha and Catherine do the work

For us all, but I see a great deal of faithfulness

In the dragon fly with her long, skinny body.

It was still dark when the fingers began to play.

Now we who have listened so hard have nothing to say.

The wavering sitar note is the early dawn.

For David Whetstone

~ Robert Bly

surprised by evening

There is unknown dust that is near us 

Waves breaking on shores just over the hill 

Trees full of birds that we have never seen 

Nets drawn with dark fish.

The evening arrives; we look up and it is there 

It has come through the nets of the stars 

Through the tissues of the grass 

Walking quietly over the asylums of the waters.

The day shall never end we think:

We have hair that seemed born for the daylight;

But at last the quiet waters of the night will rise 

And our skin shall see far off as it does under water.

~ Robert Bly

Sophia in Nature - Robert Bly interviewed by Roar Bjonnes

Roar Bjonnes is editor of Prout Journal.The nature of the discourse is in poetic terms.

Bly: According to the Gnostic religion, Sophia looked down upon this planet of ours and decided to descend into it. She entered inside the stones, the trees, the birds, and the water. She went into fire and air. This is the story of Sophia.

Bjonnes: This reminds me of the Tantric concept of Shakti.

Bly: Yes, exactly. Sophia--like Shakti--is an active, powerful force, all-encompassing and all-pervading energy in nature. 

Bly: The ecology movement, then, is a response to the inability of the capitalist world to understand that Sophia is also in the rain-forest  Through the loss of the story of Sophia, the Christian Church has given permission to the capitalists to destroy nature. This was done partly by translating the word "Sophia" as "wisdom". This destroys the story and takes away the feminine quality. There have been many such errors in translating the Old Testament, and we are suffering from those mistakes today.

hearing music at dawn

It is sweet to hear music when the night

Is just retreating from the smoky branches

And the sun's enemies are throwing down their gloves.

Music is always reminding us whom we love,

One or two notes dissolve the auditor's mind

So we are swimming once more in the old river.

We are all failed farmers learning to play whist.

We have a lot of hands to play before midnight.

Someone else will have to worry about time.

I'm always glad when I hear that an old hen

Has been seen crossing the road at dusk.

It means our old teacher is still all right.

We keep remembering Barborossa's life.

A little whiskey fits in well with our lives.

The time of the Depression is not really over.

Poems like this amount to some form of music.

We dance for two hours.  When we look up,

We see that all the musicians have disappeared.

~ Robert Bly

from Talking into the Ear of a Donkey

supposed to be

It is hard to be as popular as we are supposed to be. 

The superego or interior judge has altered its requirements ...

For one who fails to become successful and well-loved, 

punishment is swift and thorough. 

Self-esteem receives a battering from the inside, 

everyone feels insignificant and unseen until, in desperation, 

we finally agree to go on a talk show and tell it all. 

Once that moment is over, 

and universal love has not poured over our heads 

following the program, we fall still farther.

~ Robert Bly

from The Sibling Society

... while you're alive

~ Bill Moyers

 interview with Robert Bly

a delicious disease

~ Ibn Hazm

read by Robert Bly