POEM IN THREE PARTS - Robert Bly 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. II. Rising from a bed, where I dreamt Of long rides past castles and hot coals, The sun lies happily on my knees; I have suffered and survived the night, Bathed in dark water, like any blade of grass. III. The strong leaves of the box-elder tree, Plunging in the wind, call us to disappear Into the wilds of the universe, Where we shall sit at the foot of a plant, And live forever, like the dust. This poem at first seems to be so slight, and suggestive of so little.   Yet it echoes back and forth between different lines, and goes from the joy of the first stanza to the apprehension of the second, to the breadth of the third.   In the end it encompasses the whole of life. Return to the Index - Go to the Main Page