Talking into the Ear of a Donkey, excerpt

 

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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.


—Robert Bly

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hope for the guest

 

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Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think… and think… while you are alive.

What you call “salvation" belongs to the time
before death.
If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will rejoin with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten—
that is all fantasy.

What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the
City of Death.

If you make love with the divine now, in the next
life you will have the face of satisfied desire.
So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
Believe in the Great Sound!

Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for,
it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that
does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.


—Kabir 
Robert Bly version

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inside love

 

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The Guest is inside you, and also inside me; 
you know the sprout is hidden inside the seed. 
We are all struggling; none of us has gone far. 
Let your arrogance go, and look around inside. 

The blue sky opens out further and farther, 
the daily sense of failure goes away, 
the damage I have done to myself fades, 
a million suns come forward with light, 
when I sit firmly in that world. 

I hear bells ringing that no one has shaken, 
inside ''love" there is more joy than we know of, 
rain pours down, although the sky is clear of clouds, 
there are whole rivers of light. 
The universe is shot through in all parts by a single sort of love. 
How hard it is to feel that joy in all our four bodies! 

Those who hope to be reasonable about it fail. 
The arrogance of reason has separated us from that love. 
With the word "reason" you already feel miles away. 
How lucky Kabir is, that surrounded by all this joy 
he sings inside his own little boat. 

His poems amount to one soul meeting another. 
These songs are about forgetting dying and loss. 
They rise above both coming in and going out.


—Kabir
Robert Bly version
Kabir: Ecstatic Poems

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it's all right

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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
people like us

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people like us

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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

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a home in dark grass

 

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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
Stealing Sugar from the Castle

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a home in the dark grass

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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

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questions

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You've asked me what the lobster is weaving there with

his golden feet?

I reply, the ocean knows this.

You say, what is the ascidia waiting for in its transparent bell?
What is it waiting for?
I tell you it is waiting for time, like you.

You ask me whom the Macrocystis alga hugs in its arms?
Study, study it, at a certain hour, in a certain sea I know.

You question me about the wicked tusk of the narwhal,
and I reply by describing how the sea unicorn with the harpoon in it dies.

You enquire about the kingfisher's feathers,
which tremble in the pure springs of the southern tides?
Or you've found in the cards a new question touching on
the crystal architecture of the sea anemone,
and you'll deal that to me now?

You want to understand the electric nature of the ocean spines?

The armored stalactite that breaks as it walks?

The hook of the angler fish, the music stretched out

in the deep places like a thread in the water?

I want to tell you the ocean knows this, that life in its jewel boxes

is endless as the sand, impossible to count, pure,

and among the blood-colored grapes time has made the petal

hard and shiny, made the jellyfish full of light

and untied its knot, letting its musical threads fall

from a horn of plenty made of infinite mother-of-pearl.

I am nothing but the empty net which has gone on ahead

of human eyes, dead in those darknesses,

of fingers accustomed to the triangle, longitudes

on the timid globe of an orange.

I walked around as you do, investigating the endless star,

and in my net, during the night, I woke up naked,

the only thing caught, a fish trapped inside the wind.

–Pablo Neruda
Robert Bly version

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The Holy Longing

 

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Tell a wise person or else keep silent
for mass man will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm waters of the love nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling creeps over you,
as you watch the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher lovemaking sweeps you upwards.

Distance does not make you falter.
Now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly, and you are gone.

And so long as you have not experienced this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth.


–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Robert Bly translation

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grief and our ancestors

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beautywelove
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after a death

 

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Once there was a shock
that left behind a long, shimmering comet tail.
It keeps us inside.  It makes the TV pictures snowy.
It settles in cold drops on the telephone wires.

One can still go slowly on skis in the winter sun

through brush where a few leaves hang on.

They resemble pages torn from old telephone directories.

Naves swallowed by the cold.

It is still beautiful to hear the heart beat

but often the shadow seems more real than the body.

The samurai looks insignificant

beside his armor of black dragon scales.

–Tomas Tranströmer

from The Half-Finished Heaven

Robert Bly translation

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holy longing

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Tell a wise person, or else keep silent
for the massman will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm waters of the love-nights
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you
when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught
in this obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher love-making
sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter,
now, arriving in magic, flying,
and, finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are the light.

And so long as you haven’t experienced
this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth.


–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Robert Bly translation

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