Forgiving the Mailman By Robert Bly

Let’s celebrate another day lost to Eternity.

Minute by minute we eke out the story.

But the spider is on his way from night to night.

The mailman is not the one who ruins our life.

Wind has an affair with a million grains of sand.

Each sand grain has more power than Xerxes.

During those months while we slept in the womb,

The Demiurge gave us a taste for war

So that we were born mortgaged and howling.

Madame Bovary could not endure the good life.

She was like us: She wanted disgraceful nights,

Torn clothes, and the inconstant heart.

Our impoverishment follows naturally from our wealth.

The pain that man and wife feel at breakfast

Each day goes back to decisions in Heaven.

What will you say to Mahler about his daughter

Who died young? There were closed carriages in Vienna.

Freud tried to cure the insufficiency of our sorrow.

From “The Night Abraham Called To the Stars” by Robert Bly (HarperCollins: 112 pp., $23)