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Collected Poems

Page 35

by Robert Bly


  The fall is like a bare writing desk.

  The ash tree outside my window

  Has no leaves, and Ignatow is gone. . . .

  But my pen still moves freely

  On this paper. And Vera, where is she?

  In a nursing home in Newtonville.

  Lamplight shines on the floorboards.

  No response. Can I read anything I want

  Now, how about Stalingrad? Go ahead.

  Those I am dear to, those dear to me . . .

  I can stand and let my palms sweep

  Up over my stomach furnace—

  You know, the pot-bellied stove

  The Taoists talk about. And maybe

  A plume of energy does climb,

  As they say, up the spine. The turtles

  On the Galápagos don’t feel old.

  They breathe only once a minute.

  THE OLD FISHING LINES

  Sometimes I get in my car on a late October day

  And drive north. Everything that I haven’t done—

  Raking, visiting—all those reasons for not living—

  Fall away. I pass half-abandoned summer towns,

  Admiring the shadows thrown by bare trees

  On bare lakes where cold waves lap the sand.

  The renegade minister—the one they all gossip

  About—would see those waves too, after throwing

  His Sunday hat out the window. He’ll be

  All right. Death hugs the underside of oak leaves.

  In each cove you pass you will see

  What you had to say no to once.

  It’s all right if you walk down to the shore.

  You’ll feel time passing, the way the summer has.

  You’ll see the little holes that raindrops leave in fine sand

  And the old fishing lines driven up on the rocks.

  WALKING OUT IN THE MORNING

  In the city, whenever you walk out,

  The air hits you first . . . abundant,

  Nonhuman. Where has it been?

  It’s like your first college course,

  But with better teachers. Farther on,

  Your legs begin to feel the cold.

  And you learn more. It’s like

  Graduate school, in which

  Your boots keep slipping on

  The loose rock as you make

  Your way upward through

  The shale of the great poems.

  If you keep walking anyway,

  You’ll soon be on top. You’ll know

  You’ve read a lot of Germans

  When your boots are full of snow.

  A POETRY READING IN MARYLAND

  For Lucille Clifton

  You’d have been surprised at lower Maryland.

  This far south we could still sense Washington:

  George’s powdered hair in the shad blossoms,

  So many criminals wanting pardon from Lincoln.

  We all admired the great trees, leaning out over

  The bay, the English grandeur in the wide lawns.

  We came by train to read poems. All of us

  Were carrying something—it was hard to say what:

  Perhaps luck, or perhaps some recklessness

  About truth, or perhaps just a few small stones

  We kept in our pockets giving off a fragrance

  The students didn’t get enough of at home.

  We confessed a little—we had to—having brought

  So much that was hidden with us, but our intent

  Was not to confess. Our intent was to shine a little,

  Suggest that we had done well, and drop

  A hint about our childhood in the hope that

  We too would receive some sort of pardon.

  THE LOST TRAPPER

  Each time the soprano and the tenor

  Kneel and sing to each other,

  Somewhere else on stage the baritone

  Is about to die.

  The Alaskan trapper finds

  Blood on his arm, his radio

  Dead, and new snow

  Falling on the branches.

  I don’t know why the grasshopper

  Doesn’t try to wiggle

  Out from the bird’s claw,

  But he doesn’t move.

  Just forget the idea that

  Someone will come and save

  You whenever cedars begin

  Making that low sound.

  STARTING A POEM

  You’re alone. Then there’s a knock

  On the door. It’s a word. You

  Bring it in. Things go

  OK for a while. But this word

  Has relatives. Soon

  They turn up. None of them work.

  They sleep on the floor, and they steal

  Your tennis shoes.

  You started it; you weren’t

  Content to leave things alone.

  Now the den is a mess, and the

  Remote is gone.

  That’s what being married

  Is like! You never receive your

  Wife only, but the

  Madness of her family.

  Now see what’s happened?

  Where is your car? You won’t

  Be able to find

  The keys for a week.

  I HAVE DAUGHTERS AND I HAVE SONS

  1

  Who is out there at six a.m.? The man

  Throwing newspapers onto the porch,

  And the roaming souls suddenly

  Drawn down into their sleeping bodies.

  2

  Wild words of Jacob Boehme

  Go on praising the human body,

  But heavy words of the ascetics

  Sway in the fall gales.

  3

  Do I have a right to my poems?

  To my jokes? To my loves?

  Oh foolish man, knowing nothing—

  Less than nothing—about desire.

  4

  I have daughters and I have sons.

  When one of them lays a hand

  On my shoulder, shining fish

  Turn suddenly in the deep sea.

  5

  At this age, I especially love dawn

  On the sea, stars above the trees,

  Pages in The Threefold Life,

  And the pale faces of baby mice.

  6

  Perhaps our life is made of struts

  And paper, like those early

  Wright Brothers planes. Neighbors

  Run along holding the wing-tips.

  7

  I do love Yeats’s fierceness

  As he jumped into a poem,

  And that lovely calm in my father’s

  Hands, as he buttoned his coat.

  THE MOURNING DOVE’S CALL

  The mourning dove’s call woke me

  In the still night, when it was still night

  To me. Those sounds were older even

  Than the box radio, and they said,

  “Your mother is walking along the road.

  I saw your dead father last night

  Near the cottonwood grove.”

  I slept all night in a house with dear

  Friends asleep in a neighboring room.

  The call woke me in the still night.

  For Peggy and Frank

  TALKING INTO THE EAR OF A DONKEY

  I have been talking into the ear of a donkey.

  I have so much to say! And the donkey can’t wait

  To feel my breath stirring the immense oats

  Of his ears. “What has happened to the spring,”

  I cry, “and our legs that were so joyful

  In the bobblings of April?” “Oh, never mind

  About all that,” the donkey

  Says. “Just take hold of my mane, so you

  Can lift your lips closer to my hairy ears.”

  WANTING SUMPTUOUS HEAVENS

  No one grumbles among the oyster clans,

  And lobsters play their bon
e guitars all summer.

  Only we, with our opposable thumbs, want

  Heaven to be, and God to come, again.

  There is no end to our grumbling; we want

  Comfortable earth and sumptuous heaven.

  But the heron standing on one leg in the bog

  Drinks his dark rum all day, and is content.

  III

  A FAMILY THING

  I guess it’s an old family

  Thing. Someone is Napoleon,

  Someone is sacrificed. Call in

  Jesus, if you don’t get it.

  Pick up that cookie on the floor.

  Let the hired man go on

  Wasting his life. He’ll find

  Someone to waste it with.

  It’s like a game in which

  The game itself loses.

  It’s like a picnic in which

  The basket eats the food.

  It’s all right if I go to college;

  Most people don’t. It’s all right

  To end up bringing your own

  Father home. Just be quiet.

  Some powers are stronger

  Than we are. They never say

  When the battle is.

  It was last night. You lost.

  THE WATER TANK

  It’s late fall, and the box-elder leaves are gone.

  Snow falls on the horses among their hay bales

  And on the water tank overturned for winter.

  The horses bend their necks toward the white ground to eat.

  THE BOX OF CHOCOLATES

  He always knew where he had been, and he remembered

  The box elder in the fencepost, looked down on men

  Who couldn’t see the storm coming. He’d learned

  To live with the way his bait went deeper.

  My mother kept her spirits high with little jobs.

  He bought her a heart-shaped box of chocolates

  Once a year. One life, one woman,

  That was God’s rule, and he didn’t like it much.

  KEEPING QUIET

  A friend of mine says that every war

  Is some violence in childhood coming closer.

  Those whoppings in the shed weren’t a joke.

  On the whole, it didn’t turn out well.

  This has been going on for thousands

  Of years! It doesn’t change. Something

  Happened to me, and I can’t tell

  Anyone, so it will happen to you.

  THE DAY THE DOCK COMES IN

  So much happens when the dock comes in.

  Oak leaves are underfoot. They crackle

  As we carry oars to the newly painted shed.

  The lake is explaining its early life.

  My four hanging apples are gone, I don’t

  Know where. Little adjustments are every-

  Where. We’ll have to get ready to read

  Seneca—the bookcase will explain.

  It’s time now to pull up the posts,

  Drag the dock in, pile the sections,

  Lift the boat on top, and see how

  Much subtlety is lost in explaining things.

  MORNING PAJAMAS

  When you’ve slept all night in a warm bed, sometimes

  You’ll find a punky fragrance in your pajamas.

  It’s a bit low-life, but satisfying.

  It’s some sort of companionable warmth

  That your balls created during the night.

  It’s a mammal delight, related

  To the cow’s udder, one

  Of the nouns of this earth.

  Don’t be ashamed, friends;

  Don’t throw your pajamas in the washer,

  Don’t open the window;

  Forget the pilgrims!

  Think how sweet it is

  That knowledge should come

  From a source so deep.

  THAT PROBLEM IN THE FAMILY

  I don’t know how to say it.

  We were bumblers—nothing

  Was ever clear. Why the war

  Started . . . or why the car didn’t . . .

  We couldn’t do it. Probably

  Some people understood, but

  We just got on the tractor.

  We had no one to call meetings.

  “Why do you drink?” No one

  Asked that, except my mother. She

  Did, and the rest of us said, “I don’t

  Want to be on her side.”

  IV

  HEARD WHISPERS

  The spider sways in October winds; she hears the whisk

  Of the bat’s foot as it leaves the branch, the groan

  The bear makes far out on the Labrador ice,

  The cry of the wren as the hurricane takes

  The house, the cones falling, the sigh of the nun

  As she dies, the whisper Jesus makes to

  The woman drawing water, the nearly silent weeping

  Of bones eager to be laid away in the grave.

  THE SLIM FIR SEEDS

  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.

  For Micah and Chiemi

  THE BIG-NOSTRILLED MOOSE

  Horses go on eating the Apostle Island ferns,

  Also sheep and goats; also the big-nostrilled moose

  Who knocks down the common bushes

  In his longing for earthly pleasure.

  The moose’s great cock floats in the lily pads.

  That image calms us. His nose calms us.

  Slowly, obstinately, we retrieve the pleasures

  The Fathers, angry with the Gnostics, threw away.

  TURKISH PEARS

  Sometimes a poem has her own husband

  And children, her nooks and gardens and kitchens,

  Her stairs, and those sweet-armed serving boys

  Who carry veal in shiny copper pans.

  Some poems do give plebeian sweets

  Tastier than the chocolates French diners

  Eat at evening, and old pleasures abundant

  As Turkish pears picked in the garden in August.

  THOREAU AS A LOVER

  Dear old Thoreau abandoned his scandalous life

  To live among the sand cranes and the ants.

  He wasn’t exactly a crowd-pleaser, but he

  Kept company with his handsome language.

  Each day he walked alone in the woods,

  Bringing along a lover’s book which told which flower

  Was likely to blossom today. Well, well;

  Beyond that, he lived extravagantly alone.

  IN A TIME OF LOSSES

  We don’t want to alarm the heron who’s

  Guarding the cranberry bog from frost.

  But so many hares have been eaten by weasels;

  The losses go on night after night.

  Foxes slip through the bushes at dusk.

  So much we care for has been carried off.

  The airs and ars we hear in this poem

  Belong to the hare who cries out in the night.

  SO MUCH TIME

  December’s foolishness, embers fall, tempters

  Fly up into the dreamt palace. Things move so

  Slowly in the soul. It must be that we’ve

  Already been grieving for a hundred years.

  Old men and women know how much time

  Can go by while praying. Let’s not try

  To cheer each other up. It’s all right.

  We can stay in grieving another hundred years.

  THE GRACKLES

  Grackles stroll about on the black floor of sorrow.

  Rabbis robed in saffron
feed them

  Minnow bread. . . . They come to meet you.

  Moses and his black wife walk like birds

  And dance. Among the stalks of timothy grass

  The saddled horses drink from sorrow tanks.

  But the grackles’ toes are springy—they walk

  Over the footprints the dreamer made last night.

  FOR THE OLD GNOSTICS

  The Fathers put their trust in the end of the world

  And they were wrong. The Gnostics were right and not

  Right. Dragons copulate with their knobby tails.

  Some somnolent wealth rises unconcerned,

  Yes, over there! Ponderous stubborn

  Sorrow weighs down the flying Gospels.

  Scholars cobble together new versions.

  The untempered soul grumbles in empty light.

  THE PHEASANT CHICKS

  “As soon as the master is untied, the bird soars.”

  That is what Tao Yuan Ming said one day.

  “In the sad heat of noon the pheasant chicks

  Spread their new wings in the moon dust.”

  So many body cells recognize their loneliness.

 

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