Poetry July/August 2010 ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

The Ant

By Robert Bly

The ant moves on his tiny Sephardic feet.
The flute is always glad to repeat the same note.
The ocean rejoices in its dusky mansion.

Often bears are piled up close to each other.
In their world it’s just one hump after another.
It’s like looking at piles of many melons.

You and I have spent so many hours working.
We have paid dearly for the life we have.
It’s all right if we do nothing tonight.

I am so much in love with mournful music
That I don’t bother to look for violinists.
The aging peepers satisfy me for hours.

I love to see the fiddlers tuning up their old fiddles,
And the singer urging the low notes to come.
I saw her trying to keep the dawn from breaking.

You and I have worked hard for the life we have.
But we love to remember the way the soul leaps
Over and over into the lonely heavens.

Robert Bly is the author of many books of poetry and prose, including My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy (2005) and The Winged Energy of Delight: Selected Translations (2004). In 2008 he was named Minnesota’s first poet laureate.