Watching Television

deviant art by fractal blossom


Watching Television


Sounds are heard too high for ears,
From the body cells there is
an answering bay;
Soon the inner streets fill
with a chorus of barks.


We see the landing craft coming in,
The black car sliding to a stop,
The Puritan killer loosening his guns.


Wild dogs tear off noses and eyes
And run off with them down the street—
The body tears off its own arms
and throws them into the air.


The detective draws fifty-five million
people into his revolver,
Who sleep restlessly as
in an air raid in London;
Their backs become curved
in the sloping dark.


The filaments of the soul slowly
separate;
The spirit breaks,
a puff of dust floats up;
Like a house in Nebraska
that suddenly explodes.


Robert Bly

Posted over on Poetry Foundation

Robert Bly, “Watching Television” from The Light Around the Body. Copyright © 1967 and renewed 1995 by Robert Bly.