The Snowfall Is So Silent

The snowfall is so silent,
so slow,
bit by bit, with delicacy
it settles down on the earth
and covers over the fields.
The silent snow comes down
white and weightless;
snowfall makes no noise,
falls as forgetting falls,
flake after flake.
It covers the fields gently
while frost attacks them
with its sudden flashes of white;
covers everything with its pure
and silent covering;
not one thing on the ground
anywhere escapes it.
And wherever it falls it stays,
content and gay,
for snow does not slip off
as rain does,
but it stays and sinks in.
The flakes are skyflowers,
pale lilies from the clouds,
that wither on earth.
They come down blossoming
but then so quickly
they are gone;
they bloom only on the peak,
above the mountains,
and make the earth feel heavier
when they die inside.
Snow, delicate snow,
that falls with such lightness
on the head,
on the feelings,
come and cover over the sadness
that lies always in my reason.

by Miguel de Unamuno
translated by Robert Bly

alwaysashipper.livejournal.com

Think in ways you've never thought before.
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you've ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he's carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you've never seen.

When someone knocks on the door, think that he's about
To give you something large: tell you you're forgiven,
Or that it's not necessary to work all the time, or that it's
Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

duathir.livejournal.com

moireach.livejournal.com

Waking from Sleep
Robert Bly

Inside the veins there are navies setting forth,
Tiny explosions at the waterlines,
And seagulls weaving in the wind of the salty blood.

It is the morning. The country has slept the whole winter.
Window seats were covered with fur skins, the yard was full
Of stiff dogs, and hands that clumsily held heavy books.

Now we wake, and rise from bed, and eat breakfast!
Shouts rise from the harbor of the blood,
Mist, and masts rising, the knock of wooden tackle in the sunlight.

Now we sing, and do tiny dances on the kitchen floor.
Our whole body is like a harbor at dawn;
We know that our master has left us for the day.

cowboyjesus.livejournal.com

My Father’s Wedding

by Robert Bly

1924

Today, lonely for my father, I saw

a log, or branch,

long, bent, ragged, bark gone.

I felt lonely for my father when I saw it.

It was the log

that lay near my uncle’s old milk wagon.

Some men live with a limp they don’t hide,

stagger, or drag

a leg. Their sons often are angry.

Only recently I thought:

Doing what you want ...

Is that like limping? Tracks of it show in sand.

Have you seen those giant bird-

men of Bhutan?

Men in bird masks, with pig noses, dancing,

teeth like a dog’s, sometimes

dancing on one bad leg!

They do what they want, the dog’s teeth say that.

But I grew up without dog’s teeth,

showed a whole body,

left only clear tracks in sand.

I learned to walk swiftly, easily,

no trace of a limp.

I even leaped a little. Guess where my defect is!

Then what? If a man, cautious,

hides his limp,

somebody has to limp it. Things

do it; the surroundings limp.

House walls get scars,

the car breaks down; matter, in drudgery, takes it up.

On my father’s wedding day,

no one was there

to hold him. Noble loneliness

held him. Since he never asked for pity

his friends thought he

was whole. Walking alone he could carry it.

He came in limping. It was a simple

wedding, three

or four people. The man in black,

lifting the book, called for order.

And the invisible bride

stepped forward, before his own bride.

He married the invisible bride, not his own.

In her left

breast she carried the three drops

that wound and kill. He already had

his bark-like skin then,

made rough especially to repel the sympathy

he longed for, didn’t need, and wouldn’t accept.

So the Bible’s

words are read. The man in black

speaks the sentence. When the service

is over, I hold him

in my arms for the first time and the last.

After that he was alone

and I was alone.

Few friends came; he invited few.

His two-story house he turned

into a forest,

where both he and I are the hunters.

turnyourankle.livejournal.com

Whenever Jesus appears at the murky well,
I am there with my five hundred husbands.
It takes Jesus all day to mention their names.

The growing soul longs for mastery, but
The small men inside pull it into misery.
It is the nature of shame to have many children.

Earth's name is "Abundance of Desires." The serpent
Sends out his split tongue and waves it
In the air scented with so many dark Napoleons.

A general ends his life in a small cottage
With damp sheets and useless French franc notes;
He keeps his plans of attack under the mattress.

I have said to the serpent: "This is your house."
I bring in newspapers to make his nest cozy.
It's the nature of wanting to have many wives.

Sturdy rafters in lifejackets are pulled down
Till their toes touch the bottom of the Rogue River.
Wherever there is water there is someone drowning.

omarius.livejournal.com

For James Wright

There are more like us.
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.

by Robert Bly

vowel-in-thug.livejournal.com

I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
I want to get far away from the busyness of the cemeteries.
I want to sleep the sleep of that child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.

I don't want them to tell me again how the corpse keeps all its blood,
how the decaying mouth goes on begging for water.
I'd rather not hear about the torture sessions the grass arranges for
nor about how the moon does all its work before dawn
with its snakelike nose.

I want to sleep for half a second,
a second, a minute, a century,
but I want everyone to know that I am still alive,
that I have a golden manger inside my lips,
that I am the little friend of the west wind,
that I am the elephantine shadow of my own tears.

When it's dawn just throw some sort of cloth over me
because I know dawn will toss fistfuls of ants at me,
and pour a little hard water over my shoes
so that the scorpion claws of the dawn will slip off.

Because I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
and learn a mournful song that will clean all earth away from me,
because I want to live with that shadowy child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.

--translated by Robert Bly

the-grynne.livejournal.com

NIGHT PIECE

The ship, slow and rushing at the same time, can
get ahead of the water
but not the sky.
The blue is left behind, opened up in living silver,
and is ahead of us again.
The mast, fixed, swings and constantly returns
--like an hour hand that points
always to the same hour--
to the same stars,
hour after hour black and blue.
The body as it daydreams goes
towards the earth that belongs to it, from the other earth
that does not. The soul stays on board, moving
through the kingdom it has owned from birth.

JUAN RAMON JIMENEZ

Translated from the Spanish by Robert Bly

black-dawning.livejournal.com

God does what she wants. She has very large
Tractors. She lives at night in the sewing room
Doing stitchery. Then chunks of land at mid-
Sea disappear. The husband knows that his wife
Is still breathing. God has arranged the open
Grave. That grave is not what we want,
But to God it’s a tiny hole, and he has
The needle, draws thread through it, and soon
A nice pattern appears. The husband cries,
“Don’t let her die!” But God says, “I
Need a yellow dot here, near the mailbox.”

The husband is angry. But the turbulent ocean
Is like a chicken scratching for seeds. It doesn’t
Mean anything, and the chicken’s claws will tear
A Rembrandt drawing if you put it down.

In memory of Jane Kenyon

-Robert Bly

ilex011-reboot.livejournal.com

The weather is grey now, strange evening
rain creeps down from the sky
and lands silently on the field
as if it intended to overpower a sleeper.

Circles swarm on the fjord's surface;
and that is the only surface there is right now,
the rest is height and depth:
to rise and to sink.

Two pine trunks shoot up
and continue in long, hollow signal-drums.
Cities and the sun gone off.
In the high grass there is thunder.

It's ok to telephone the island that is a mirage.
It's ok to listen to that grey voice.
To thunder, iron ore is honey.
It's ok to live by your own code.

Current Mood: touched
Current Music: siouxsie and the banshees- umbrella

2much-estrogen.livejournal.com

"Walking Around"
by Pablo Neruda
transl. Robert Bly

It so happens I am sick of being a man.
And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie
houses
dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt
steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.

( The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse )

extra goody-
spanish here

the-grynne.livejournal.com

ROAD

   They are all asleep, below.
                                       Above, awake,
the helmsman and I.

   He, watching the compass needle, lord
of the bodies, with their keys turned
in the locks. I, with my eyes
toward the infinite, guiding
the open treasures of the souls.

JUAN RAMON JIMENEZ

Translated by Robert Bly

( original Spanish )

http://users.livejournal.com/_ananda_/

Why Mira Can't Come Back to Her Old House

The colors of the Dark One have penetrated Mira's body; all
the other colors washed out.
Making love with the Dark One and eating little, those are
my pearls and my carnelians.
Meditation beads and the forehead streak, those are my
scarves and my rings.
That's enough feminine wiles for me. My teacher taught me
this.
Approve me or disapprove me: I praise the Mountain Energy
night and day.
I take the path that ecstatic human beings have taken for
centuries.
I don't steal money, I don't hit anyone. What will you charge
me with?
I have felt the swaying of the elephant's shoulders; and now
you want me to climb on a jackass? Try to be serious.

Mirabai (1498 - 1565?)
version by Robert Bly

empressofstars.livejournal.com

Counting Small-Boned Bodies

Let's count the bodies over again.

If we could only make the bodies smaller
The size of skulls
We could make a whole plain white with skulls in the moonlight!

If we could only make the bodies smaller
Maybe we could get
A whole year's kill in front of us on a desk!

If we could only make the bodies smaller
We could fit
A body into a finger-ring for a keepsake forever.

Robert Bly

binahboy.livejournal.com

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

In the calm water 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 the 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 gone.
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 ,

Translation: Robert Bly

3butterflies.livejournal.com

Letters to a Young Poet #4, Rainer Maria Rilke

You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

--[I believe this is translated by Robert Bly]--

it-is-just.livejournal.com

Gacela of the Dark Death
by Federico García Lorca
Translated by Robert Bly

   I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
I want to get far away from the busyness of the cemeteries.
I want to sleep the sleep of that child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.

   I don't want them to tell me again how the corpse keeps all its blood,
how the decaying mouth goes on begging for water.
I'd rather not hear about the torture sessions the grass arranges for
nor about how the moon does all its work before dawn
with its snakelike nose.

   I want to sleep for half a second,
a second, a minute, a century,
but I want everyone to know that I am still alive,
that I have a golden manger inside my lips,
that I am the little friend of the west wind,
that I am the elephantine shadow of my own tears.

   When it's dawn just throw some sort of cloth over me
because I know dawn will toss fistfuls of ants at me,
and pour a little hard water over my shoes
so that the scorpion claws of the dawn will slip off.

   Because I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
and learn a mournful song that will clean all earth away from me,
because I want to live with that shadowy child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.

shisoru.livejournal.com

The wind, one brilliant day, called
to my soul with an odor of jasmine.

"In return for the odor of my jasmine,
I'd like all the odor of your roses."

"I have no roses; all the flowers
in my garden are dead."

"Well then, I'll take the withered petals
and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain."

the wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself:
"What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?"

Translated by Robert Bly

Current Mood: contemplative

godplaysdice.livejournal.com

The one part of this otherwise wonderful poem that just will not sit right for me is the part in the third stanza where Bly translates, "In the far North where the day/ lives in a pit night and day." In the original Swedish, Tranströmer uses two words (both of which do, presumably, translate to "day"): dag and dagen, and the poem reads better for it. Anyway, does anyone here know enough Swedish to tell me what the difference between the two forms is?

Sailor's Tale
by Tomas Tranströmer
(trans. Robert Bly)

There are stark winter days when the sea has links
to the mountain areas, hunched over in feathery grayness,
blue for a moment, then the waves for hours are like pale
lynxes, trying to get a grip on the gravelly shore.

On a day like that the wrecks leave the sea and go looking for
their owners, surrounded by noise in the city, and drowned
crews blow toward land, more delicate than pipe-smoke.

(In the Far North, the real lynx walks, with sharpened claws
and dream eyes. In the Far North where the day
lives in a pit night and day.

There the sole survivor sits by the furnace
of the Northern Lights, and listens to the music
coming from the men frozen to death.)

Current Music: Yo-Yo Ma - No. 5 In C Minor - Sarabande

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I Eat Poetry

Entries tagged with robert bly

Miguel de Unamuno, 'The Snowfall Is So Silent'

Things to Think by Robert Bly

Miguel de Unamuno, ' The Snowfall Is So Silent'

Waking from Sleep, Robert Bly

Father's Day Stuff

My Father’s Wedding

robert bly, "the french generals"

People Like Us

Gacela of the Dark Death - Federico García Lorca

Juan Ramón Jiménez, "Night Piece"

The Yellow Dot

After a Long, Dry Spell- Tomas Tranströmer (translated by Robert Bly)

why couldn't you have been my boyfriend, neruda?

Juan Ramón Jiménez, "Road"

Mirabai

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The Holy Longing....

Letters to a Young Poet #4, Rainer Maria Rilke

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The Wind, One Brilliant Day by Antonio Machado

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