Time Runs Backward After Death

Painting by Karin Kuhlmann


Time Runs Backward After Death


1

Samson,
grinding bread for widows an orphans,
Forgets he is wronged, and the answers
The Philistines wrangled out of him
go back into the lion.
The bitter and the sweet marry.
He himself wronged the lion.
Now the wheat caresses the wind
with its wifely tail;
the donkey runs in the long grass;
and having glimpsed heaven,
The fox’s body saunters the tawny earth.

2

After death the soul returns
to drinking milk and honey
in its sparse home. Broken lintels
Rejoin the sunrise gates,
and bees sing in the sour meat.
Once more in the cradle his
Hair grows long and golden;
Delilah’s scissors turn back
into two tiny and playful swords.
Samson,
no longer haunted by sunset and shadows,
Sinks down in the eastern ocean
and is born.


Robert Bly

Posted over on Poet Seers