Indigo Bunting by Robert Bly
Indigo Bunting
Robert BlyI go to the door often.
Night and summer. Crickets
lift their cries.
I know you are out.
You are driving
late through the summer night.I do not know what will happen.
I have no claim on you.
I am one star
you have as guide; others
love you, the night
so dark over the Azores.You have been working outdoors,
gone all week. I feel you
in this lamp lit
so late. As I reach for it
I feel myself
driving through the night.I love a firmness in you
that disdains the trivial
and regains the difficult.
You become part then
of the firmness of night,
the granite holding up walls.There were women in Egypt who
supported with their firmness the stars
as they revolved,
hardly aware
of the passage from night
to day and back to night.I love you where you go
through the night, not swerving,
clear as the indigo
bunting in her flight,
passing over two
thousand miles of ocean.
ABOUT ROBERT BLY
Robert Bly was born on December 23, 1926, in Madison, Minnesota. He attended Harvard University and received his MA from the University of Iowa in 1956. As a poet, editor, and translator, Bly has had a profound impact on the shape of American poetry. Bly is the author of more than thirty books of poetry, including Stealing Sugar from the Castle: Selected Poems (W. W. Norton, 2013); Talking into the Ear of a Donkey: Poems (W. W. Norton, 2011); Reaching Out to the World: New and… (more)
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ENDNOTES
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