Those Being Eaten by America

Those Being Eaten by America


The cry of those being eaten by America,
Others pale and soft being stored
for later eating


And Jefferson
Who saw hope in new oats


The wild houses go on
With long hair growing from
between their toes
The feet at night get up
And run down the long white roads
by themselves


The dams reverse themselves
and want to go stand alone
in the desert


Ministers who dive headfirst
into the earth
The pale flesh
Spreading guiltily into
new literatures


That is why these poems are so sad
The long dead running over the fields


The mass sinking down
The light in children’s faces fading
at six or seven


Robert Bly

Posted over on Poetry Foundation


The world will soon break up into small colonies of the saved
Robert Bly, “Those Being Eaten by America” from The Light Around the Body. Copyright © 1967 and renewed 1995 by Robert Bly.