Collected Poems

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Collected Poems Page 18

by Robert Bly

Blessings then on the man who labors

  In his tiny room, writing stanzas on the lamb;

  Blessings on the woman, who picks the brown

  Seeds of solitude in afternoon light

  Out of the black seeds of loneliness.

  And blessings on the dictionary maker, huddled among

  His bearded words, and on the setter of songs

  Who sleeps at night inside his violin case.

  A SACRIFICE IN THE ORCHARD

  The man with the Roman nose sits high

  on the roof ridge, longs for it

  to be Saturday. And moles

  begin crossing the lawn,

  thousands of moles,

  the grief-stricken parents

  come behind in closed cars.

  Come with me, we will

  sink on this blue raft

  down through acres

  of continental water. Shaggy

  goats bound from the earth.

  Over them, men

  hang from the branches.

  They are all apples. The side

  of the apple gleams,

  and in that gleam

  all the water on the planet

  plunges down at once. . . .

  MY WIFE’S PAINTING

  1

  I walk on a gravel path through cut-over

  Woods. November’s bare light has arrived.

  I come at dusk

  Where, sheltered by poplars, a low pond lies.

  The sun abandons the sky, speaking through cold leaves.

  2

  This Tang painting is called “The Six Philosophers.”

  Five Chinamen talk in the open-walled house,

  Exchanging poems.

  Only one is outdoors, looking over

  The cliff, being approached from below by rolling mists.

  3

  A deer comes down the bare slope toward me,

  Sees me, turns away, back up the hill

  Into the lone trees.

  It is a doe out in the cold and air alone.

  It is the woman turned away from the philosopher’s house.

  4

  It’s an old, long story. After Heraclitus dies,

  The males sink down to a-pathy,

  To not-suffering.

  When you shout at them, they don’t reply.

  They turn their face toward the crib wall, and die.

  5

  My wife showed me yesterday her new

  Painting. One bird of hers, a lively one,

  Had come.

  It was a large bird with big feet,

  And stubby wings, arrows lightly stuck in the arms.

  MY FATHER’S WEDDING

  1924

  Today, lonely for my father, I saw

  a log, or branch,

  long, bent, ragged, bark gone.

  I felt lonely for my father when I saw it.

  It was the log

  that lay near my uncle’s old milk wagon.

  Some men live with an invisible limp,

  stagger, or drag

  a leg. Their sons are often angry.

  Only recently I thought:

  Doing what you want . . .

  Is that like limping? Tracks of it show in sand.

  Have you seen those giant bird-

  men of Bhutan?

  Men in bird masks, with pig noses, dancing,

  teeth like a dog’s, sometimes

  dancing on one bad leg!

  They do what they want, the dog’s teeth say that!

  But I grew up without dogs’ teeth,

  showed a whole body,

  left only clear tracks in sand.

  I learned to walk swiftly, easily,

  no trace of a limp.

  I even leaped a little. Guess where my defect is!

  Then what? If a man, cautious

  hides his limp,

  somebody has to limp it! Things

  do it; the surroundings limp.

  House walls get scars,

  the car breaks down; matter, in drudgery, takes it up.

  On my father’s wedding day,

  no one was there

  to hold him. Noble loneliness

  held him. Since he never asked for pity

  his friends thought he

  was whole. Walking alone, he could carry it.

  He came in limping. It was a simple

  wedding, three

  or four people. The man in black,

  lifting the book, called for order.

  And the invisible bride

  stepped forward, before his own bride.

  He married the invisible bride, not his own.

  In her left

  breast she carried the three drops

  that wound and kill. He already had

  his barklike skin then,

  made rough especially to repel the sympathy

  he longed for, didn’t need, and wouldn’t accept.

  They stopped. So

  the words are read. The man in black

  speaks the sentence. When the service

  is over, I hold him

  in my arms for the first time and the last.

  After that he was alone

  and I was alone.

  No friends came; he invited none.

  His two-story house he turned

  into a forest,

  where both he and I are the hunters.

  FOUR WAYS OF KNOWLEDGE

  1

  So many things happen

  when no one is watching.

  Yesterday Peter and I

  arrived on the island

  to visit Iolani Luahine,

  the old holy dancer.

  We couldn’t find her.

  Later that night, he

  dreamt he flew out,

  saw her temple ahead,

  but grew tired, faltered,

  turned back, saw me

  standing by the window,

  caught the balcony

  railing, pulled himself in.

  I was not there;

  instead a woman with claw

  feet and hands met him.

  She intended to pull

  all that he had

  out through his navel.

  What to do . . . to stall her.

  To fight or to flee—

  He didn’t know. He wanted

  to fight and to flee.

  His feet in tennis shoes

  moved back and forth,

  rubbing the carpet.

  I awoke at four, hearing

  the sound of shoe soles

  scuffing the soft rug.

  Peter was still asleep

  and in his bed. When

  I called his name,

  the sound of shoe soles

  stopped. At breakfast

  he mentioned his dream.

  2

  Now I have gone alone

  to write by the ocean,

  and watch the fish

  between rocks.

  I feel my eyes

  open below the water.

  Some power I cannot see

  moves these small fish.

  The sunlit ocean approaches

  and recedes, rolling in

  on its black lava base.

  So much happens

  when no one is watching,

  perhaps because

  no one is watching.

  Pirates bring their ship in

  when night has come;

  the dancer becomes beautiful

  when men see her

  no longer; the movie becomes

  clear when all

  the actors are dead.

  Earth is a thicket of thistles

  waiting for the Wild Man.

  Everything is in motion,

  even what is still.

  The planet turns, and cows

  wait for the grassblades

  to come rushing to their mouths.

  3

  I know there is someone

  wh
o tries to teach us.

  He has four ways

  to do that: First

  is Memory, chosen.

  I remember that I fell

  one Sunday—I was three

  or four—from my parents’

  car; I saw it leaving

  me on the road.

  My parents do not recall it.

  If we ignore that, he

  waits till we are asleep,

  opens the images, borrows

  faces, turns men into turtles.

  I dreamt that I sat

  in a chair, and every other

  second I disappeared.

  That didn’t reach me;

  I went on with no change.

  Then he moves, inter-

  feres with matter, books fall

  open to a certain passage.

  Two strangers in one day

  speak the same sentence.

  The funeral is over;

  the telephone rings;

  or tennis shoes

  that have no molecules

  wake a sleeper.

  If we still learn nothing,

  then he turns to accidents,

  disease, suffering,

  lost letters, torpid sleeps,

  disasters, catatonia.

  We walk, the glass

  mountain opens, we fall

  in. I usually ignore

  the earlier three,

  and learn by falling.

  This time we live it,

  and only awaken years later.

  FIFTY MEN SITTING TOGETHER

  1

  After a long walk in the woods clear cut for lumber,

  Lit up by only a few young pines,

  I turn home,

  Drawn to water. A band of shadow

  Softens half the lake,

  Draws the shadow

  Down from westward hills.

  I see in that massive

  Masculine shadow

  Fifty men sitting together

  In hall or crowded room,

  Lifting something indistinct

  Up into the resonating night.

  2

  Near shore, reeds stand about in groups

  Unevenly as if they might

  Finally ascend

  To the sky all together!

  Each reed has its own

  Thin thread

  Of darkness inside so

  It is relaxed

  And rooted in the mud.

  So the son who has lived

  Protected by the mother lives protected

  By reeds in the joy of the half-darkness.

  3

  The woman stays in the kitchen, and does not want

  To waste fuel by lighting a lamp,

  As she waits

  For the drunk husband to come home.

  Then she serves him

  Food in silence.

  What does the son do?

  He cleaves to her,

  Looks down,

  Goes outdoors to feed with wild

  Things, lives in the reeds,

  Pulls away from men,

  Reaches upward, looks to the sky, ascends.

  4

  How far he is from working men when he is forty!

  From all men! The men singing

  Chant far out

  On the water grounded in downward shadow.

  He cannot go there because

  He still hopes

  He will not die. He will

  Not throw

  Himself into the shadow.

  The dark comes down slowly,

  The way snow falls,

  Or herds pass a cave mouth.

  I look up at the other shore; it is night.

  CRAZY CARLSON’S MEADOW

  Crazy Carlson cleared this meadow alone.

  Now three blue

  jays live in it.

  Crazy Carlson cleared it back to the dark firs.

  Feminine poplars have stepped out

  in front, now

  he is dead,

  winding their leaves slowly in the motionless October air,

  leaves midway between pale green and yellow,

  as if a yellow

  scarf were floating

  six inches down in the Pacific. Old fir branches

  above and below make sober

  octopus caves,

  inviting as the dark-

  lidded eyes of those women on islands who live in bark huts.

  A blue sky rises over the trees, pure blue,

  too pure and blue.

  There is no room

  for the dark-lidded boys who longed to be Hercules.

  There is no room even for Christ.

  He broke off

  his journey toward the Father,

  and leaned back into the Mother’s fearful tree.

  He sank through the bark. The energies the Sadducees

  refused him

  turned into nails,

  and the wine of Cana turned back to vinegar.

  Blessings on you, my king, broken

  on the poplar tree.

  Your shoulders quivered

  like an aspen leaf before the storm of Empire.

  You fell off then, and the horse galloped away

  into the wind without

  you and disappeared

  into the blue sky. Did you both reach the Father’s house?

  But the suffering is over now, all

  consequences finished,

  the lake closed

  again, as before the leaf fell, all forgiven, the path ended.

  Now each young man wanders in the sky alone,

  ignoring the absent

  moon, not knowing

  where ground is, longing once more for the learning

  of the fierce male who hung for nine days only

  on the windy tree.

  When he got down,

  darkness was there, inside the folds of darkness words hidden.

  KNEELING DOWN TO LOOK INTO A CULVERT

  I kneel down to peer into a culvert.

  The other end seems far away.

  One cone of light floats in the shadowed water.

  This is how our children will look when we are dead.

  I kneel near floating shadowy water.

  On my knees, I am half inside the tunnel—

  blue sky widens the far end—

  darkened by the shadowy insides of the steel.

  Are they all born? I walk on farther;

  out in the plowing I see a lake newly made.

  I have seen this lake before . . . it is a lake

  I return to each time my children are grown.

  I have fathered so many children and returned

  to that lake—grayish flat slate banks,

  low arctic bushes. I am a water-serpent, throwing water drops

  off my head. My gray loops trail behind me.

  How long I stay there alone! For a thousand years

  I am alone, with no duties, living as I live.

  Then one morning a feathery head pokes from the water.

  I fight—it’s time—it’s right—and am torn to pieces fighting.

  LOVING

  A WOMAN

  IN TWO

  WORLDS

  (1985)

  I

  THE INDIGO BUNTING

  I go to the door often.

  Night and summer. Crickets

  Lift their cries.

  I know you are out.

  You are driving

  Late through the summer night.

  I do not know what will happen.

  I have no claim on you.

  I am one star

  You have as guide; others

  Love you, the night

  So dark over the Azores.

  You have been working outdoors,

  Gone all week. I feel you

  In this lamp lit

  So late. As I reach for it

  I feel myself

  Driving through the nig
ht.

  I love a firmness in you

  That disdains the trivial

  And regains the difficult.

  You become part then

  Of the firmness of night,

  The granite holding up walls.

  There were women in Egypt who

  Supported with their firmness the stars

  As they revolved,

  Hardly aware

  Of the passage from night

  To day and back to night.

  I love you where you go

  Through the night, not swerving,

  Clear as the indigo

  Bunting in her flight,

  Passing over two

  Thousand miles of ocean.

  “OUT OF THE ROLLING OCEAN, THE CROWD . . .”

  It is not only the ant that walks on the carpenter’s board alone,

  Nor the March turtle on his boulder surrounded by March water . . .

  I know there are whitecaps that are born and die alone,

  And a rocky pasture, and a new one nearby, with a path between.

  There are branchy stalks, dropped to the ground last summer,

  And tires, half worn-down, lifted to the gas-station-owner’s rack.

  All of them I saw today, and all of them were dear to me,

  And the rough-barked young cottonwood alone on the windy shore.

  Behind matter there is some kind of heat, around and behind things,

  So what we experience is not the turtle nor the night

  Only, nor the rising whirlwind, nor the certainty, nor the steady gaze,

  Nor the meeting by the altar, nor the rising sun only.

  THE WHOLE MOISTY NIGHT

  The Viking ship sails into the full harbor.

  The body meets its wife far out at sea.

  Its lamp remains lit the whole moisty night.

  Water pours down, faint flute notes in the sound of the water.

  SECRETS

  I walk below the over-bending birches,

  birches that arch together in the air.

 

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