by Robert Bly
Blackberries have so many faces that their jam
Is a kind of thickening of nothing; each of us
Loves to eat the thick syrup of nonexistence.
When each stanza closes with the same word,
I am glad. A friend says, “If you’re proud of that,
You must be one of the secretaries of nonexistence!”
THE BUFF-CHESTED GROUSE
I have spent my whole life doing what I love.
Let’s honor the quail who searches so hard for food.
Here I am, playing flute in a cistern like Joseph.
My genius amounts to persistence in following
Elephants through the wind. Sometimes the long vowels
Go on ahead and show us where the road is.
Thank God for Jaufre Rudel who taught even
The Vikings the road of love. We are incompetent, hopeless
Lovers, but we do play the shawm in the wind.
It was only when I was out in the fields, hiding
From the winds, that I understood that what fell
To pieces last night could be whole this morning.
I don’t know if you’ve heard the buff-chested grouse
When he drums on an old log. He is like Hafez
Repeating something he has heard from his teacher.
Robert, I hope you’re not bragging in this poem.
Don’t drag out the comparison to Joseph.
We’re just talking here of feathers blown in the wind.
STEALING SUGAR FROM THE CASTLE
We are poor students who stay after school to study joy.
We are like those birds in the India mountains.
I am a widow whose child is her only joy.
The only thing I hold in my ant-like head
Is the builder’s plan of the castle of sugar.
Just to steal one grain of sugar is a joy!
Like a bird, we fly out of darkness into the hall,
Which is lit with singing, then fly out again.
Being shut out of the warm hall is also a joy.
I am a laggard, a loafer, and an idiot. But I love
To read about those who caught one glimpse
Of the Face, and died twenty years later in joy.
I don’t mind your saying I will die soon.
Even in the sound of the word soon, I hear
The word you which begins every sentence of joy.
“You’re a thief!” the judge said. “Let’s see
Your hands!” I showed my callused hands in court.
My sentence was a thousand years of joy.
TALKING
INTO
THE EAR
OF A
DONKEY
(2011)
I
RAVENS HIDING IN A SHOE
There is something men and women living in houses
Don’t understand. The old alchemists standing
Near their stoves hinted at it a thousand times.
Ravens at night hide in an old woman’s shoe.
A four-year-old speaks some ancient language.
We have lived our own death a thousand times.
Each sentence we speak to friends means the opposite
As well. Each time we say, “I trust in God,” it means
God has already abandoned us a thousand times.
Mothers again and again have knelt in church
In wartime asking God to protect their sons,
And their prayers were refused a thousand times.
The baby loon follows the mother’s sleek
Body for months. By the end of summer, she
Has dipped her head into Rainy Lake a thousand times.
Robert, you’ve wasted so much of your life
Sitting indoors to write poems. Would you
Do that again? I would, a thousand times.
COURTING FORGETFULNESS
It’s hard to know what sort of rough music
Could send our forgetfulness back into the ground,
From which the gravediggers pulled it years ago.
The first moment of the day we court forgetfulness.
Even when we are fully awake, a century can
Go by in the space of a single heartbeat.
The life we lose through forgetfulness resembles
The earth that sticks to the sides of plowshares
And the eggs the hen has abandoned in the woods.
A thousand gifts were given to us in the womb.
We lost hundreds during the forgetfulness of birth,
And we lost the old heaven on the first day of school.
Forgetfulness resembles the snow that weighs down
The fir boughs; behind our house you’ll find
A forest going on for hundreds of miles.
It’s to our credit that we can remember
So many lines of Rilke, but the purpose of forgetfulness
Is to remember the last time we left this world.
KEEPING OUR SMALL BOAT AFLOAT
So many blessings have been given to us
During the first distribution of light, that we are
Admired in a thousand galaxies for our grief.
Don’t expect us to appreciate creation or to
Avoid mistakes. Each of us is a latecomer
To the earth, picking up wood for the fire.
Every night another beam of light slips out
From the oyster’s closed eye. So don’t give up hope
That the door of mercy may still be open.
Seth and Shem, tell me, are you still grieving
Over the spark of light that descended with no
Defender near into the Egypt of Mary’s womb?
It’s hard to grasp how much generosity
Is involved in letting us go on breathing,
When we contribute nothing valuable but our grief.
Each of us deserves to be forgiven, if only for
Our persistence in keeping our small boat afloat
When so many have gone down in the storm.
PAYING ATTENTION TO THE MELODY
All right. I know that each of us will die alone.
It doesn’t matter how loud or soft the sitar plays.
Sooner or later the melody will say it all.
The prologue is so long! At last the theme comes.
It says the soul will rise above all these notes.
It says the dust will be swept up from the floor.
It doesn’t matter if we say our prayers or not.
We know the canoe is heading straight for the falls,
And no one will pick us up from the water this time.
One day the mice will carry our ragged impulses
All the way to Egypt, and at home the cows
Will graze on a thousand acres of thought.
Everyone goes on hoping for a good death.
The old rope hangs down from the hangman’s nail.
The forty-nine robbers are climbing into their boots.
Robert, don’t expect too much. You’ve put yourself
Ahead of others for years, a hundred years.
It will take a long time for you to hear the melody.
LONGING FOR THE ACROBAT
There is so much sweetness in children’s voices,
And so much discontent at the end of day,
And so much satisfaction when a train goes by.
I don’t know why the rooster keeps on crying,
Nor why the elephant lifts his knobby trunk,
Nor why Hawthorne kept hearing trains at night.
A handsome child is a gift from God,
And a friend is a vein in the back of the hand,
And a wound is an inheritance from the wind.
Some say we are living at the end of time,
But I believe a thousand pagan ministers
Will arrive tomorrow to baptize the wind.
There’s nothing we need to do about Saint John.
Whene
ver he laid his hands on earth
The well water was sweet for a hundred miles.
Everywhere people are longing for a deeper life.
Let’s hope some acrobat will come by
And give us a hint how to get into heaven.
NIRMALA’S MUSIC
The music that Nirmala is playing today goes
By two names: The One Who Finds Lost Things,
And The One Through Whom Everything Is Lost.
Tigers go on eating people in the Forest
Of Existence. The Gods agree to this. Saints
Admire whiskers that have been dipped in blood.
Women with their newly washed hair, the souls
Born again and again into sleek, fresh bodies,
Boards leaning against a barn . . . what does it all mean?
Men think ahead, and are mainly providential.
They laid out Egypt. But I like women so much.
They say: “Let the lambs come and be killed.”
And women suffer the most. Between every child born,
So many rugs are woven and taken apart. The water
Of a hundred bowls is poured out on the ground.
The hungry tigers follow the disappearing dogs
Into the woods of life. Women understand this,
For this is a world in which everything is lost.
THE FROGS AFTER DARK
I am so much in love with mournful music
That I don’t bother to look for violinists.
The aging peepers satisfy me for hours.
The ant moves on his tiny Sephardic feet.
The flute is always glad to repeat the same note.
The ocean rejoices in its dusky mansion.
Bears are often piled up close to each other.
In caves of bears, it’s just one hump
After another, and there is no one to sort it out.
You and I have spent so many hours working.
We have paid dearly for the life we have.
It’s all right if we do nothing tonight.
We’ve heard the fiddlers tuning their old fiddles,
And the singer urging the low notes to come.
We’ve heard her trying to keep the dawn from breaking.
There is some slowness in life that is right for us.
But we love to remember the way the soul leaps
Over and over into the lonely heavens.
THE SYMPATHIES OF THE LONG-MARRIED
Oh well, let’s go on eating the grains of eternity.
What do we care about improvements in travel?
Angels sometimes cross the river on old turtles.
Shall we worry about who gets left behind?
That one bird flying through the clouds is enough.
Your sweet face at the door of the house is enough.
The two farm horses stubbornly pull the wagon.
The mad crows carry away the tablecloth.
Most of the time, we live through the night.
Let’s not drive the wild angels from our door.
Maybe the mad fields of grain will move.
Maybe the troubled rocks will learn to walk.
It’s all right if we’re troubled by the night.
It’s all right if we can’t recall our own name.
It’s all right if this rough music keeps on playing.
I’ve given up worrying about men living alone.
I do worry about the couple who live next door.
Some words heard through the screen door are enough.
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 ditch-digger 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.
FATHER AND SON
There’s no end to the going forth on ships,
And the clack of the dog’s paws on the floor,
And women who are still lively at eighty.
There’s no end to the rumbling of train cars,
And the whine of the twenty-year-old driver turning
The corner, and the dog barking to the end of time.
There’s no end to the trampling of horses,
And the way old men throw down their cards,
And the haughty look on the opera singer’s face.
There’s no end to my ragged stanzas,
And the shirttails blowing in the wind,
And the tree branches broken in the storm.
Have I said there’s no end to people dying,
To the drops of sweat on the young girl’s shoulder,
And the fatigue of the threshing hands at dusk?
There’s a way in which card games finally do end,
And the convict finally turns himself in,
And the father sends his youngest son off on the bus.
II
RAINS
The weather is moody and rainy.
No one knows when Jesus will come.
The long rains have come and gone.
A thousand acres are underwater.
THE ROOF NAIL
A hundred boats are still looking for shore.
There is more in my hopes than I imagined.
The tiny roof nail lies on the ground, aching for the roof.
Some little bone in our foot is longing for heaven.
A DAY IN LATE JUNE
The old man sits in his chair and looks down.
It will come, my dears. The femur leads
To the kneecap, and New Zealand is not
Far behind. They will all catch up.
Schoolchildren are free. Curtains stretch
Out before the window like girls on a picnic.
None of the famous ones have died. The boys
Still hold in them the seeds of Roncevaux.
New people have taken over the motel. It’s
All right. What right did we have to throw
Tires into the river? Plotinus nursed
Until he was eleven. He saw the Dear One,
And she is the hardest to see. The hawk’s
Wing feathers shine. His eyes are bright.
Some invisible sweetness holds the knee
And the kneecap together. Our tongue
Goes on moving; the fire in the heart
Continues burning. Sparkles of sunshine
Light up the curtains that sway in the wind.
The old man sits in his chair and looks down.
DEALING WITH PARENTS
It’s hard to know what to say about parents:
One man said, “I failed my parents.” He led his parents
Across a lousy street—two lines of traffic.
Another started a lost colony for his parents.
He rowed across the river, towing his parents.
He bought them boots and pith helmets,
And sent them into battle. One man dressed them
In Austrian uniforms and gave them
Maps of Russia. No one ever saw them again.
Another man who had studied alchemy
Tried t
o transubstantiate his parents. It used
A lot of heat but there wasn’t much change.
Someone else I knew stored his parents
In an empty cistern—the ladder is still sticking out.
Another man tied his parents all one day
And night in a rocking chair. And they
Died all right. . . . But by the end, they
Knew for certain that they’d had children.
THE SENSE OF GETTING OLDER
There’s no doubt winter is coming. I see
My London Fog jacket is made in China.
