[New-Poetry] Robert Bly on the Writer's Almanac

[Anny Ballardini]

and happy Birthday to Renoir!


Poem: "Snowbanks North of the House" by Robert Bly, from Selected Poems. © Harper Collins. Reprinted with permission. 

Snowbanks North of the House

Those great sweeps of snow that stop suddenly six feet
        from the house...
Thoughts that go so far.
The boy gets out of high school and reads no more books;
the son stops calling home.
The mother puts down her rolling pin and makes no more 
        bread.
And the wife looks at her husband one night at a party 
        and loves him no more.
The energy leaves the wine, and the minister falls leaving 
        the church.
It will not come closer-
the one inside moves back, and the hands touch nothing,
         and are safe.

And the father grieves for his son, and will not leave the
         room where the coffin stands;
he turns away from his wife, and she sleeps alone.

And the sea lifts and falls all night; the moon goes on
         through the unattached heavens alone.
And the toe of the shoe pivots 
in the dust...
The man in the black coat turns, and goes back down the 
        hill.
No one knows why he came, or why he turned away, and 
       did not climb the hill. 



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Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing star! 
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