Come with Me
by Robert Bly

Come with me into those things that have felt this despair for so long—
Those removed Chevrolet wheels that howl with a terrible loneliness,
Lying on their backs in the cindery dirt, like men drunk, and naked,
Staggering off down a hill at night to drown at last in the pond.
Those shredded inner tubes abandoned on the shoulders of thruways,
Black and collapsed bodies, that tried and burst,
And were left behind;
And the curly steel shavings, scattered about on garage benches,
Sometimes still warm, gritty when we hold them,
Who have given up, and blame everything on the government.
And those roads in South Dakota that feel around in the darkness …

Source: Poetry (September 1964).
Poetry Foundation

Robert Bly, “Come with Me” from The Light Around the Body. Copyright © 1967 and renewed 1995 by Robert Bly. Reprinted with the permission of HarperCollins Publishers.