GHAZAL BALLAD OF ROBERT BLY

Reading The Rubaiyat, young Robert Bly overturned
his tractor. It was all right. He suffered from scraped
elbows and knees but not from insignificance.

After Harvard Robert had heard enough lies. Living
alone, painting warehouses in New York, he starved and
wrote fevered poems defying insignificance.

Back to the Midwest, then to Norway on a Fulbright.
In the Oslo library he watched Neruda’s great torch
put to flight the shadows of insignificance.

Flying around the US denouncing the Vietnam War,
he risked prison to advise draft resisters
not to let their lives be fed to insignificance.

Jung and the Grimm Brothers collided in his brain—
the light they made showed American women and men
a mountain beyond the plain of insignificance.

Thomas, you saw Haydn’s film on Robert last night.
Like everyone else in the theater, you woke in
the dark wrestling with the Angel of Insignificance.

For Haydn Reiss and his film A Thousand Years of Joy.

Thomas R. Smith