A Reading By Robert Bly Wiley Hall Oct.16,2013

A lyre slants against the chair you sit in. Silent and alert, as ever it waits for the poet's touch to shimmer the strings into sharp sounds. You sit still, revolving poems in your memory, sifting them to find the ones we can grapple with, take fully within our minds. Late in the evening, we discover the mind's neighbor, the shy soul, so often hidden, suddenly appears, having already written these poems, so ancient and abiding is the measure of your words. And we realize as cold October air bites our homeward faces, that your soul has been laughing us into joy for almost nine decades.