The Panther

Ranier Maria Rilke
translated by Robert Bly

Jardin des Plantes, Paris

From seeing and seeing the seeing has become so exhausted
it no longer sees anything anymore.
The world is made of bars, a hundred thousand
bars, and behind the bars, nothing.

The lithe swinging of that rhythmical easy stride
that slowly circles down to a single point
is like a dance of energy around a hub,
in which a great will stands stunned and numbed.

At times the curtains of the eye lift
without a sound—then a shape enters,
slips through the tightened silence of the shoulders,
reaches the heart and dies.

Sometimes

Herman Hesse
Translated by Robert Bly

Sometimes, when a bird cries out,
Or the wind sweeps through a tree,
Or a dog howls in a far off farm,
I hold still and listen a long time.

My soul turns and goes back to the place
Where, a thousand forgotten years ago,
The bird and the blowing wind
Were like me, and were my brothers.

My soul turns into a tree,
And an animal, and a cloud bank.
Then changed and odd it comes home
And asks me questions. What should I reply?

Magic Words

Robert Bly (after Nalungiaq)

In the very earliest time,
when both people and animals lived on earth,
a person could become an animal if he wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen could happen—
all you had to do was say it.
Nobody can explain this:
That's the way it was.

The Team of Workhorses

Robert Bly

The two workhorses come in from the field.
They stand at the tank, horse collars still on.
Their coltishness remains tangled in their rumpled manes.

They offer, generously, to do all the work.
They rarely look back over their shoulders. Their long
Eyelashes are girlish, and their foreheads, blunt

To the wind, say, "We might change our minds right now."
Their eyes flare like children's. They are easily startled
And are as changeable as cottonwoods in wind.

They might gallop this minute five miles up the canyon.
Their extravagant ears, stuffed with hair, turn so
Swiftly to absorb a splash, a thundercrack, a rock

Falling, guiding knowledge directly into the brain.
I think we are less safe now than our grandparents
Were when horses turned their faces to look at them.

2008: The White Horse by D.H. Lawrence