POETRY: Silence by Robert Bly

The fall has come, clear as the eyes of chickens.
Strange muffled sounds come from the sea,
Sounds of muffled oarlocks,
And swampings in lonely bays,
Surf crashing on unchristened shores,
And the wash of tiny snail shells in the wandering gravel.

My body also wanders among these doorposts and cars,
Cradling a pen, or walking down a stair
Holding a cup in my hand,
And not breaking into the pastures that lie in the sunlight.
This is the sloth of the man inside the body,
The sloth of the body lost among the wandering stones of kindness.

Something homeless is looking on the long roads—
A dog lost since midnight, a small duck
Among the odorous reeds,
Or a tiny box-elder bug searching for the window pane.
Even the young sunlight is lost on the window pane,
Moving at night like a diver among the bare branches silently lying on the floor.