BLY, Robert

Snowbanks North of the House

Those great sweeps of snow that stop suddenly six
feet from the house ...
Thoughts that go so far.
The boy gets out of high school and reads no more
books;
the son stops calling home.
The mother puts down her rolling pin and makes no
more bread.
And the wife looks at her husband one night at a
party, and loves him no more.
The energy leaves the wine, and the minister falls
leaving the church.
It will not come closer
the one inside moves back, and the hands touch
nothing, and are safe.

The father grieves for his son, and will not leave the
room where the coffin stands.
He turns away from his wife, and she sleeps alone.

And the sea lifts and falls all night, the moon goes on
through the unattached heavens alone.

The toe of the shoe pivots
in the dust ...
And the man in the black coat turns, and goes back
down the hill.
No one knows why he came, or why he turned away,
and did not climb the hill.


Evolution from the Fish

This grandson of fishes holds inside him

A hundred thousand small black stones.

This nephew of snails, six feet long, lies naked on a bed

With a smiling woman, his head throws off light

Under marble, he is moving toward his own life

Like fur, walking. And when the frost comes, he is

Fur, mammoth fur, growing longer

And silkier, passing the woman's dormitory,

Kissing a stomach, leaning against a pillar,

he moves toward the animal, the animal with furry head!

What a joy to smell the flesh of a new child!

Like new grass! And this long man with the student girl,

Coffee cups, her pale waist, the spirit moving around them,

Moves, dragging a great tail into the darkness.

In the dark we blaze up, drawing pictures

Of spiny fish, we throw off the white stones!

Serpents rise from the ocean floor with spiral motions,

A man goes inside a jewel, and sleeps. Do

Not hold my hands down! Let me raise them!

A fire is passing up through the soles of my feet!


The Yellow Dot

(In Memory of Jane Kenyon)

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.