IN A TRAIN
by Robert Bly
There has been a light snow.
Dark car tracks move in and out of the darkness.
I stare at the train window marked with soft dust.
I have awakened at Missoula, Montana, utterly happy.
Illustration: Vintage postcard by Curt Teich & Co.
DRIVING WEST IN 1970
by Robert Bly
My dear children, do you remember the morning
When we climbed into the old Plymouth
And drove west straight toward the Pacific?
We were all the people there were.
We followed Dylan’s songs all the way west.
It was Seventy; the war was over, almost;
And we were driving to the sea.
We had closed the farm, tucked in
The flap, and were eating the honey
Of distance and the word “there.”
Oh whee, we’re gonna fly
Down into the easy chair. We sang that
Over and over. That’s what the early
Seventies were like. We weren’t afraid.
And a hole had opened in the world.
We laughed at Las Vegas.
There was enough gaiety
For all of us, and ahead of us was
The ocean. Tomorrow’s
The day my bride’s gonna come.
And the war was over, almost.
Note: “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” is the Bob Dylan song referred to in “Driving West in 1970.” Listen to a 1968 version by the Byrds here. Find it on Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Volume II at Amazon.com.
LIVING AT THE END OF TIME
by Robert Bly
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 crying,
Nor why elephants keep raising their trunks,
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 John. The Baptist
Has been laying his hands on earth for so long
That the well water is sweet for a hundred miles.
It’s all right if we don’t know what the rooster
Is saying in the middle of the night, nor why we feel
So much satisfaction when a train goes by.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Robert Bly (born December 23, 1926) is an American poet and author of Iron John: A Book About Men (1990), a key text of the mythopoetic men’s movement, which spent 62 weeks on the The New York Times Best Seller list. He won the 1968 National Book Award for Poetry for his book The Light Around the Body. (Read more at wikipedia.org.)
PHOTO: “Train at Sunset, New Mexico” (1941) by Jack Delano.
THE MOON
by Robert Bly
After writing poems all day,
I go off to see the moon in the pines.
Far in the woods I sit down against a pine.
The moon has her porches turned to face the light,
But the deep part of her house is in the darkness.
“The Moon” appears in Robert Bly’s collection Eating the Honey of Words (HarperCollins, 1999), available at Amazon.com.
Photo: “Winter Moon” by Mark Rutley, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
IN A TRAIN
by Robert Bly
There has been a light snow.
Dark car tracks move in and out of the darkness.
I stare at the train window marked with soft dust.
I have awakened at Missoula, Montana, utterly happy.
Illustration: Vintage postcard by Curt Teich & Co.
DRIVING WEST IN 1970
by Robert Bly
My dear children, do you remember the morning
When we climbed into the old Plymouth
And drove west straight toward the Pacific?
We were all the people there were.
We followed Dylan’s songs all the way west.
It was Seventy; the war was over, almost;
And we were driving to the sea.
We had closed the farm, tucked in
The flap, and were eating the honey
Of distance and the word “there.”
Oh whee, we’re gonna fly
Down into the easy chair. We sang that
Over and over. That’s what the early
Seventies were like. We weren’t afraid.
And a hole had opened in the world.
We laughed at Las Vegas.
There was enough gaiety
For all of us, and ahead of us was
The ocean. Tomorrow’s
The day my bride’s gonna come.
And the war was over, almost.
Note: “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” is the Bob Dylan song referred to in “Driving West in 1970.” Listen to a 1968 version by the Byrds here. Find it on Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Volume II at Amazon.com.
Photo: 1960 Plymouth Fury. When “Driving West in 1970” mentions “old Plymouth,” I figured the car was at least 10 years old (though the vehicle in the above photo looks grand). From what I’ve gathered, while other car models were moving away from fins, the fins on the 1960 Plymouth Fury were bigger than ever. I like to think of these Plymouth fins helping the Bly family fly and swim all the way to the ocean during this 1970 journey.
THE MOON
by Robert Bly
After writing poems all day,
I go off to see the moon in the pines.
Far in the woods I sit down against a pine.
The moon has her porches turned to face the light,
But the deep part of her house is in the darkness.
“The Moon” appears in Robert Bly’s collection Eating the Honey of Words (HarperCollins, 1999), available at Amazon.com.
Photo: “Winter Moon” by Mark Rutley, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
ODE TO THE WATERMELON (Excerpt)
by Pablo Neruda
…the round, magnificent,
star-filled watermelon.
It’s a fruit from the thirst-tree.
It’s the green whale of the summer.
The dry universe
all at once
given dark stars
by this firmament of coolness
lets the swelling
fruit
come down:
its hemispheres open
showing a flag
green, white, red,
that dissolves into
wild rivers, sugar,
delight!
Jewel box of water, phlegmatic
queen
of the fruitshops,
warehouse
of profundity, moon
on earth!
You are pure,
rubies fall apart
in your abundance,
and we
want
to bite into you,
to bury our
face
in you, and
our hair, and
the soul!
When we’re thirsty
we glimpse you
like
a mine or a mountain
of fantastic food,
but
among our longings and our teeth
you change
simply
into cool light
that slips in turn into
spring water
that touched us once
singing.
And that is why
you don’t weigh us down
in the siesta hour
that’s like an oven,
you don’t weigh us down,
you just
go by
and your heart, some cold ember,
turned itself into a single
drop of water.
(translated by Robert Bly)
Photo: “Watermelons” by Kumon
IN THE MONTH OF MAY
by Robert Bly
In the month of May when all leaves open,
I see when I walk how well all things
lean on each other, how the bees work,
the fish make their living the first day.
Monarchs fly high; then I understand
I love you with what in me is unfinished.
I love you with what in me is still
changing, what has no head or arms
or legs, what has not found its body.
And why shouldn’t the miraculous,
caught on this earth, visit
the old man alone in his hut?
And why shouldn’t Gabriel, who loves honey,
be fed with our own radishes and walnuts?
And lovers, tough ones, how many there are
whose holy bodies are not yet born.
Along the roads, I see so many places
I would like us to spend the night.
##
Painting: “Apple Blossoms I” by Georgia O’Keeffe (1930)
IN A TRAIN
Poem by Robert Bly
There has been a light snow.
Dark car tracks move in and out of the darkness.
I stare at the train window marked with soft dust.
I have awakened at Missoula, Montana, utterly happy.
Illustration: Vintage postcard by Curt Teich & Co.
Silver Birch Press 