The Executive’s Death

By Robert Bly b. 1926 Robert Bly

Merchants have multiplied more than the stars of heaven.

Half the population are like the long grasshoppers

That sleep in the bushes in the cool of the day;

The sound of their wings is heard at noon, muffled, near the earth.

The crane handler dies; the taxi driver dies, slumped over

In his taxi. Meanwhile high in the air an executive

Walks on cool floors, and suddenly falls.

Dying, he dreams he is lost in a snowbound mountain

On which he crashed, carried at night by great machines.

As he lies on the wintry slope, cut off and dying,

A pine stump talks to him of Goethe and Jesus.

Commuters arrive in Hartford at dusk like moles

Or hares flying from a fire behind them,

And the dusk in Hartford is full of their sighs.

Their trains come through the air like a dark music,

Like the sound of horns, the sound of thousands of small wings.

Source: Selected Poems (HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 1986)

Biography

Since the 1960s, Robert Bly has written poetry that is nonacademic, based in the natural world, the visionary, and the realm of the irrational. As a poet, editor and translator, Bly has profoundly affected American verse, introducing many unknown European and South American poets to new readers. In addition to his poetic endeavors, he has gained attention for his theories on the roots of social problems, and his efforts to help . . .

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