. . .My teacher taught me this.
Approve me or disapprove me: I praise the Mountain Energy night and day.
I take the path that ecstatic human beings have taken for centuries.
I don’t steal money, I don’t hit anyone. What will you charge me with?
I have felt the swaying of the elephant’s shoulders; and now
you want me to climb on a jackass? Try to be serious.
translated by Robert Bly
Wow, great stuff. Even if this is noticeably “Bly-ish” it works wonderfully–and maybe because of that bluntness.
But you know you have to hand it to him, he does introduce a lot of poets one might not find on one’s own.
And I find I like that about him rather than his own work or that Irom Man stuff.
Oh yeah, I agree. I really enjoyed the book of letters between Bly and Transtromer; it gave me a much better appreciation of Bly and his aims as a poet, which was an added bonus for me because I was reading mainly (at first) because of my interest in Transtromer. His translation of the Rumi piece you posted earlier is amazing.