Please tell me why the lamb is in love with the wolf And why the child’s finger calls the hammer down And why at dusk Alexander walks toward his enemies. Tell me why the gazelle grazes so close to the lion And why the rat makes up games on the snake’s tail And why the student bends his head when he’s attacked. One meadow in the redwoods can contain a thousand ferns. By this we deduce we are living in the serpent’s home. Each curly fern is his tongue unfolding. The poet makes a meadow from each leaf. Each curve of language turns into a lamb’s ear, Because a genius is a child in the house of suffering. None of us is free from a certain bend in the knee. The caws from the oak-bound ravens in the trees Around our house guide Alexander toward the night. The old man’s voice breaks as he sings at Easter. In between the clapping, there’s always a voice breaking. Last night in Jerez some people lived, some people died.
You can find this poem in Robert Bly’s fantastic book of poems— Stealing Sugar from the Castle: Selected Poems, 1950–2011.
EASTER SUNDAY
IN THE HOLY LAND
In the first version
it was described by the translator as a lamentation
but by the third or fourth it had become weeping,
less biblical, more accessible to a modern sensibility
but either way, she wasn’t happy to have lost her family
to the bombing. Husband, babies, the almost-adolescent.
An uncle who was visiting.
The means of murder gifted to her enemies by Western
governments who no longer bother to explain themselves.
What can they say?
Jesus was American, spoke English.
Occasionally, as recompense,
they drop treats by parachute, supplies
in plastic packages, originally intended for astronauts.
Imagine
what it’s like to float in space attached to nothing.
Robert Bly’s poetry and essays for me have always been grist for the mill. He was a great writer and an important Presence in the world. This poem is profoundly beautiful, and deeply representative of his work and being. Thank you.
M.L. Rosenberg, writing in Tribune Books, noted in Bly’s work a blending of European and South American influences with a decidedly American sensibility: “Bly is a genius of the elevated ‘high’ style, in the European tradition of Rilke and Yeats, the lush magical realism of the South Americans like Lorca and Neruda. Yet Bly’s work is truly American, taking its atmosphere of wide empty space from the Midwest, and its unabashed straightforward emotionalism and spiritualism.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/robert-bly#:~:text=In%201966%2C%20Bly%20cofounded%20American,poetry%2C%20essays%2C%20and%20translations.