Here’s our third and final poem from Robert Bly, “His Nest”:

It’s all right if this suffering goes on for years.
It’s all right if the hawk never finds his own nest.
It’s all right if we never receive the love we want.

It’s all right if we listen to the sitar for hours.
It doesn’t matter how softly the musician plays.
Sooner or later the melody will say it all.

It doesn’t matter if we regret our crimes or not.
The mice will carry our defeats into Asia,
And the Tuva throat-singers will tell the whole story.

It’s all right if we can’t remain cheerful all day.
The task we have accepted is to go down
To renew our friendship with the ruined things.

It’s all right if people think we are idiots.
It’s all right if we lie face down on the earth.
It’s all right if we open the coffin and climb in.

It’s not our fault that things have gone wrong.
Let’s agree that it was Saturn and the other old men
Who have arranged this series of defeats for us.

(From Talking into the Ear of a Donkey © 2011 by Robert Bly. Reprinted with permission of W.W.Norton & Company. Photo by Flickr user Emily Carlin)