Warning To the Reader

Warning to the Reader

1.
Sometimes farm granaries become especially beautiful
when all the oats or wheat are gone, and the wind has
swept the rough floor clean. Standing inside, we see
around us, coming in through the cracks between shrunken
wall boards, bands or strips of sunlight. So in a poem
about imprisonment, one sees a little light.
But how many birds have died trapped in these
granaries. The bird, seeing the bands of light, flutters
up the walls and falls back again and again. The way out
is where the rats enter and leave; but the rat's hole is
low to the floor. Writers, be careful then by showing the
sunlight on the walls not to promise the anxious and
panicky blackbirds a way out.
I say to the reader, beware. Readers who love poems
of light may sit hunched in the corner with nothing in
their gizzards for four days, light failing, the eyes glazed....
They may end as a mound of feathers and a skull on the open
boardwood floor....

2.
Sometimes farm granaries become
especially beautiful
when all the oats or wheat are gone,
and the wind has swept
the rough floor clean.
Standing inside, we see around us,
coming in through the cracks between
shrunken wall boards,
bands or strips of sunlight.
So in a poem about imprisonment,
one sees a little light.

But how many birds have died trapped
in these granaries.
The bird, seeing the bands of light,
flutters up the walls and falls back
again and again.
The way out is where the rats enter
and leave; but the rat's hole is low
to the floor.
Writers, be careful then by showing
the sunlight on the walls
not to promise the anxious
and panicky blackbirds a way out.

I say to the reader, beware.
Readers who love poems of light
may sit hunched in the corner
with nothing in their gizzards
for four days, light failing,
the eyes glazed....
They may end as a mound of feathers
and a skull on the open boardwood floor....


Robert Bly

1. Robert Bly's prose poem.
2. Line Breaks by Glenn Buttkus