Robert Bly
Love of the Wind

We’ve spent a lot of time keeping some old men alive.

I don’t think you should criticize us for that.

Even old sailors keep their love of the wind.

 

We know so little of our neighbor’s sorrow.

He never told us what happened to his son.

What can it mean that Jesus had no sister?

 

We’ll never know anything better than a dog.

It doesn't matter how deeply he sleeps.

The sleeping dog leaves all the world for the floor.

 

It’s all right if the family gathers together at night

And sings like sailors when the wind rises.

The roof of the house will last the night.

 

I’ve never been an old friend to the wind.

Don’t expect me to be happy about haystacks

Scattered in a storm or blown-down barns.

 

Don’t expect me to talk about the Spanish armada

Getting into trouble off the Galway coast.

Even old sailors keep their love of the wind.

 
Found In Volume 40, No. 05
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Robert Bly
About the Author

Robert Bly was an American poet, author, activist and leader of the Mythopoetic Men's Movement,  best known to the public at large as the author of Iron John: A Book About Men (1990, reprinted 2001 as Iron John: Men and Masculinity). His many books of poems include Stealing Sugar from the Castle: Selected and New Poems, 1950-2013 (W. W. Norton & Company, 2013) and My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy (HarperCollins, 2005).