Collected Poems

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Collected Poems Page 40

by Robert Bly


  Three-Day Fall Rain, 359

  Three Kinds of Pleasures, 3

  Three Presidents, 44

  Threshers, The, 498

  Tightening the Cinch, 427

  Time Runs Backward after Death, 305

  Today, autumn, 59

  Today, lonely for my father, I saw, 222

  Today I was alone a few hours, and slowly, 250

  “To live” means to pick up particles of death, 177

  To Live or Not, 177

  Tongues Whirling, 115

  Tonight I rode again in the moonlight!, 111

  Tonight I rode through the cornfield in the moonlight!, 26

  Tonight the first fall rain washes away my sly distance, 113

  Trap-Door, The, 381

  Tree Knocked Down by Lightning, The, 192

  Trespassing on the Pierce Ranch, 138

  Turkish Pears, 486

  Turning Away from Lies, 56

  Turtle, A, 128

  Turtle, The (How shiny the turtle is, coming out), 72

  Turtle, The (Rain lifts the lake level, washing the reeds), 246

  Turtle Climbing from a Rock, 107

  Two Days on the Farm, 166

  Two Middle-Aged Lovers, 241

  Two People at Dawn, 238

  Two Prose Poems on Locked-In Animals, 132

  Two Rivers, The, 243

  Two Ways to Write Poems, 315

  Uncrtainty, 497

  Unrest, 11

  Visiting Emily Dickinson’s Grave with Robert Francis, 209

  Visiting My Father, 276

  Visiting Sand Island, 364

  Visiting the Eighty-Five-Year-Old Poet, 318

  Visiting the Teacher, 424

  Visiting Thomas Hart Benton and His Wife in Kansas City, 147

  Wagon and the Cliff, The, 385

  Waiting for the Stars, 268

  Waking from Sleep, 4

  Waking in the Middle of the Night, 445

  Waking on the Farm, 321

  Walk, A, 181

  Walking. Afternoon. The war still going on, I stoop down to, 141

  Walking and Sitting, 180

  Walking Backward, 382

  Walking in the Ditch Grass, 114

  Walking in the Hardangervidda, 149

  Walking north toward the point, I come on a dead seal. From a, 143

  Walking on the Sussex Coast, 128

  Walking Out in the Morning, 475

  Walking Swiftly, 157

  Walking to the Next Farm, 161

  Walking Where the Plows Have Been Turning, 186

  Wallace Stevens and Florence, 271

  Wallace Stevens in the Fourth Grade, 346

  Walnut Tree Orchards, The, 110

  Waltz, The, 347

  Wanting More Applause at a Conference, 329

  Wanting Sumptuous Heavens, 480

  Wanting to Experience All Things, 65

  Wanting to Steal Time, 383

  War and Silence, 49

  Watching Andrei Voznesensky Read in Vancouver, 130

  Watching Television, 37

  Water Drawn Up into The Head, 99

  Waterfall Coming over a Cliff, 132

  Watering the Horse, 23

  Water is practical, 203

  Water Tank, The, 482

  Waves rush up, pause, and drag pebbles back around stones . . . , 142

  Way the Parrot Learns, The, 386

  We are approaching sleep: the chestnut blossoms in the mind, 12

  We are in Reelfoot Lake, Green Island Cutoff. It is a wide ditch, 134

  We are poor students who stay after school to study joy, 459

  We are up. The wheel below my window hangs useless, like a, 146

  We drive between lakes just turning green, 53

  Week in Florence, A, 445

  Week of Poems at Bennington, A, 340

  Week on the Oregon Coast, A, 449

  We have a longing for the mud on riverbanks, 378

  We have gambled, we’ve staked our house on a throw, 447

  We have to think now what it would be like, 348

  We hear phrases: “He made me do it,” 332

  We know the road the gods take, but we do not know, 274

  We know the suffering is about to begin again, 500

  Welcoming a Child in the Limantour Dunes, 138

  Well, let’s say this morning is all of life there is—, 330

  Well, water goes down the Montana gullies, 272

  Well I do it, and it’s done, 343

  Well there it is. There’s nothing to do, 340

  We Love This Body, 167

  We moved the poetry reading to the Exercise Room, 495

  We Only Say That, 342

  We saw new ice in the ruts on the way to school, 381

  We slept that night in Delaware, Ohio, 16

  We spent all day fishing and talking, 29

  We started up. All the way he held my hand. Sometimes he falls, 139

  We think of Charlemagne, 66

  We walk together in willows, among willows, 244

  We were sitting there, badly blessed, and brooding, 365

  What Bill Stafford Was Like, 344

  What can I say? You have this funny, 345

  What cave are you in, hiding, rained on?, 18

  What Did We See Today?, 499

  What does it mean to live, 301

  What Frightened Us, 242

  What I did I did, 237

  What if these long races go on repeating themselves, 42

  What is it like to “get killed”? Getting killed, 316

  What Is Sorrow For?, 489

  What is sorrow for? It is a storehouse, 489

  What is so strange about a tree alone in an open field?, 5

  What is this wonderful thing? Brown and everywhere! It has, 130

  What Kept Horace Alive, 377

  What kind of people, 248

  What Moves and Doesn’t Move, 260

  What shall the world do with its children?, 39

  What the Animals Paid, 324

  What the Buttocks Think, 343

  What the Old Poets Failed to Say, 505

  What to Do with The Garden, 436

  What we have loved is with us ever, 253

  What We Provide, 252

  What? You want to live your life over again?, 313

  When a man like me steps out at dawn, it seems to him that he, 206

  Whenever Jesus appears at the murky well, I, 394

  When have we had enough?, 302

  When I Am with You, 420

  When I am with you, two notes of the sarod, 420

  When I come near the red peony flower, 244

  When I cry, I want everyone else to cry, 398

  When I hear that we all belong to nonexistence, 457

  When I look at childhood, I see the yellow rose bush, 323

  When I wake, I hear sheep eating apple peels just outside the, 157

  When I was President, I crushed snails with my bare teeth, 44

  When I write poems, I need to be near grass that no one else, 152

  When My Dead Father Called, 326

  When summer was nearly over, 349

  When the Cat Stole the Milk, 340

  When the Dumb Speak, 67

  When the two rivers, 253

  When the waterholes go, and the fish flop about, 423

  When the Wheel Does Not Move, 165

  When Threshing Time Ends, 322

  When we are in love, we love the grass, 20

  When We Became Lovers, 376

  When we start westward, 302

  When we stride or stroll across the frozen lake, 274

  When William Stafford Died, 272

  When your privacy is beginning over, 108

  When you’ve slept all night in a warm bed, sometimes, 483

  Where We Must Look for Help, 14

  Who is out there at six a.m.? The man, 478

  Whole Moisty Night, The, 237

  Why does the prophet climb on the same ship so
many times?, 423

  Why do I suddenly feel free of panic?, 274

  Why God allowed Montserrat to fall, 394

  Why Is It the Spark’s Fault?, 404

  Why We Don’t Die, 310

  Widowed Friend, The, 341

  Wildebeest, The, 372

  “Will you rescue her?” We have dreams like that, 355

  Wind blows, and lake water breaks over the bare lake-rocks no, 150

  Winemaker and the Captain, The, 206

  Wings Folding Up, 168

  Winter Afternoon by the Lake, 360

  Winter Poem, 239

  With Pale Women in Maryland, 15

  With small steps he climbed very high mountains, 344

  Women We Never See Again, 183

  Words Barely Heard, 253

  Words Rising, 218

  Words the Dreamer Spoke to My Father in Maine, 364

  Wounding Others, 343

  Writing Again, 173

  Written at Mule Hollow, Utah, 216

  Written in Dejection near Rome, 42

  Yearly Failure, The, 174

  Yellow Dot, The, 335

  Yesterday I saw a face, 258

  You’d have been surprised at lower Maryland, 476

  You open your mouth, I put my tongue in, 115

  Your chest, hospital gown, 276

  You’re alone. Then there’s a knock, 477

  You United States, frightened by dreams of Guatemala, 77

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Robert Bly is the author of numerous poetry volumes, as well as books of nonfiction and translation. His honors include the Poetry Society of America’s Frost Medal and the National Book Award. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

 

 

 


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