Bly - Stealing Sugar from the Castle: Selected and New Poems, 1950--2013

ROBERT BLY Stealing Sugar from the Castle S E L E C T E D P O E M S, 1950 TO 2013 W. W. Norton & Company New YorkLondon Adjusting type size may change line breaks. Landscape mode may help to preserve line breaks. For RuthMy Darling, lets dance a step Contents 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, Trees that start again, Drawing up from the great roots. So men captured by the Moors Wake rowing in the cold ocean Air, living 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 savior, A home in dark grass, And nourishment in death. Theres a joyful night in which we lose Everything, and drift Like a radish Rising and falling, and the ocean at last Throws us into the ocean; In that ocean we are sinking As if floating on darkness. The body raging, And driving itself, disappearing in smoke: Walks in large cities late at night, Reading the Bible in Christian Science windows, Or reading a history of Bougainville: Then the images appear Images of grief, Images of the body shaken in the grave, And the graves filled with seawater; Fires in the sea, Bodies smoldering like ships, Images of wasted life, Life lost, imagination ruined, The house fallen, The gold sticks broken! Then shall the talkative be silent And the dumb will speak.

The dove returns; it found no resting place; It was in flight all night above the shaken seas. Beneath Ark eaves The dove shall magnify the tigers bed; Give the dove peace. The split-tail swallows leave the sill at dawn; At dusk blue swallows shall return. On the third day the crow shall fly; The crow, the crow, the spider-colored crow, The crow shall find new mud to walk upon. We are approaching sleep: the chestnut blossoms in the mind Mingle with thoughts of pain, And the long roots of barley, bitterness As of the oak roots staining the water dark In Louisiana, the wet streets soaked with rain And sodden blossoms, out of this We have come, a tunnel softly hurtling into darkness. The storm is coming.

The small farmhouse in Minnesota Is hardly strong enough for the storm. Darkness, darkness in the grasses, darkness in trees. Even the water in wells trembles. Bodies give off darkness, and chrysanthemums Are dark, and horses, who are bearing great loads of hay To the deep barns where the dark air is moving from the corners. Lincolns statue, and the traffic. From the long past Into the long present A bird forgotten in these pressures, warbling, As the great wheel turns around, grinding The living in water.

Washing, continual washing, in water now stained With blossoms and rotting logs, cries half Muffled, from beneath the earth, the living finally as awake as the dead. and Related Poems I How much I long for the night to come AgainI am restless all afternoon And the huge stars to appear All over the heavens!... The black spaces between stars... And the blue to fade away. II I worked on poems with my back to the window, Waiting for the darkness that I remember Noticing from my cradle. When I step over and open the door, I am A salmon slipping over the gravel into the ocean.

III One star stands alone in the western darkness: Arcturus. Caught in their love, the Arabs called it The Keeper of Heaven. I think It was in the womb that I received The thirst for the dark heavens. I If I think of a horse wandering about sleeplessly All night on this short grass covered with moonlight, I feel a joy, as if I had thought Of a pirate ship plowing through dark flowers. II The box elders around us are full of joy, Obeying what is beneath them. The lilacs are sleeping, and the plants are sleeping; Even the wood made into a casket is asleep.

III The butterfly is carrying loam on its wings; The toad is bearing tiny bits of granite in his skin. The leaves at the crown of the tree are asleep Like the dark bits of earth at its root. IV Alive we are like a sleek black water beetle, Skating across still water in any direction We choose, and soon to be swallowed Suddenly from beneath. I The grass is half covered with snow. It was the sort of snowfall that starts in late afternoon, And now the little houses of the grass are growing dark. II If I could reach down, near the earth, I could take handfuls of darkness! A darkness that was always there, which we never noticed.

III As the snow grows heavier, the cornstalks fade farther away, And the barn moves nearer to the house. The barn moves all alone in the growing storm. IV The barn is full of corn, and moving toward us now, Like a hulk blown toward us in a storm at sea; All the sailors on deck have been blind for many years. I We spent all day fishing and talking. At last, late at night, I sit at my desk alone, And rise and walk out in the summery night. A dark thing hopped near me in the grass.

II The trees were breathing, the windmill slowly pumped. Overhead the rain clouds that rained on Ortonville Covered half the stars. The air was still cool from their rain. III It is very late. I am the only one awake. Men and women I love are sleeping nearby.

IV The human face shines as it speaks of things Near itself, thoughts full of dreams. The human face shines like a dark sky As it speaks of those things that oppress the living. I I love to see boards lying on the ground in early spring: The ground beneath them is wet, and muddy Perhaps covered with chicken tracks And they are dry and eternal. II This is the wood one sees on the decks of ocean ships, Wood that carries us far from land, With a dryness of something used for simple tasks, Like a horses tail. III This wood is like a man who has a simple life, Living through the spring and winter on the ship of his own desire. He sits on dry wood surrounded by half-melted snow As the rooster walks away springily over the dampened hay.

There is unknown dust that is near us, Waves breaking on shores just over the hill, Trees full of birds that we have never seen, Nets drawn down with dark fish. The evening arrives; we look up and it is there, It has come through the nets of the stars, Through the tissues of the grass, Walking quietly over the asylums of the waters. The day shall never end, we think: We have hair that seems born for the daylight; But, at last, the quiet waters of the night will rise, And our skin shall see far off, as it does underwater. I Sometimes, riding in a car, in Wisconsin Or Illinois, you notice those dark telephone poles One by one lift themselves out of the fence line And slowly leap on the gray sky And past them, the snowy fields. II The darkness drifts down like snow on the picked cornfields In Wisconsin: and on these black trees Scattered, one by one, Through the winter fields We see stiff weeds and brownish stubble, And white snow left now only in the wheeltracks of the combine. III It is a pleasure, also, to be driving Toward Chicago, near dark, And see the lights in the barns.

The bare trees more dignified than ever, Like a fierce man on his deathbed, And the ditches along the road half full of a private snow. After Drinking All Night with a Friend,
We Go Out in a Boat at Dawn to See
Who Can Write the Best Poem These pines, these fall oaks, these rocks, This water dark and touched by wind I am like you, you dark boat, Drifting over water fed by cool springs. Beneath the waters, since I was a boy, I have dreamt of strange and dark treasures, Not of gold or strange stones, but the true Gift, beneath the pale lakes of Minnesota. This morning also, drifting in the dawn wind, I sense my hands, and my shoes, and this ink Drifting, as all of the body drifts, Above the clouds of the flesh and the stone. A few friendships, a few dawns, a few glimpses of grass, A few oars weathered by the snow and the heat, So we drift toward shore, over cold waters, No longer caring if we drift or go straight. I Oh, on an early morning I think I shall live forever! I am wrapped in my joyful flesh, As the grass is wrapped in its clouds of green.