Blessings on the Dweller

--Robert Bly

There is a dweller in the dark cabin.

Who is this, someone hearing and telling?

The relative has come, the dark ocean shell.

There is something solid, a dweller in the cabin.

The face of the cabin awakens--

What the savage loves in his madness.

The cavern itself wakes up. There is a traveler--

He has to be awake--sleeping in the cabin.

Far down in my dream, I dreamt a bearded fish.

An old one, immense, slipped into my arms.

The traveler gone so long has returned.

There is a dweller in the dark cabin.

The linen merchants find Joseph singing.

Tiny bits of thread join into longer strings,

Indistinguishable from music when they join,

Something mingling, continual, eternal.

Who is that? A man travels here and there,

Something slowly gains solidity in November air.

Our relative from the lair and the shell has come.

There is a dweller in the cabin.