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Two poems by Marvin Bell

“To Dorothy” and “The Self and the Mulberry”

To Dorothy

You are not beautiful, exactly. 

You are beautiful, inexactly. 

You let a weed grow by the mulberry 

And a mulberry grow by the house. 

So close, in the personal quiet 

Of a windy night, it brushes the wall 

And sweeps away the day till we sleep. 

A child said it, and it seemed true: 

‘Things that are lost are all equal.’ 

But it isn’t true. If I lost you, 

The air wouldn’t move, nor the tree grow. 

Someone would pull the weed, my flower. 

The quiet wouldn’t be yours. If I lost you, 

I’d have to ask the grass to let me sleep.


The Self and the Mulberry

I wanted to see the self, so I looked at the mulberry. 

It had no trouble accepting its limits, 

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yet defining and redefining a small area 

so that any shape was possible, any movement. 

It stayed put, but was part of all the air. 

I wanted to learn to be there and not there 

like the continually changing, slightly moving 

mulberry, wild cherry and particularly the willow. 

Like the willow, I tried to weep without tears. 

Like the cherry tree, I tried to be sturdy and productive. 

Like the mulberry, I tried to keep moving. 

I couldn’t cry right, couldn’t stay or go. 

I kept losing parts of myself like a soft maple. 

I fell ill like the elm. That was the end 

of looking in nature to find a natural self. 

Let nature think itself not manly enough! 

Let nature wonder at the mystery of laughter. 

Let nature hypothesize man’s indifference to it. 

Let nature take a turn at saying what love is!

Marvin Bell

Marvin Bell (1937-2020) was an American poet who was named the first Poet Laureate of Iowa in 2000. Raised on Long Island, NY, he received an MFA form the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he would later teach for 40 years, retiring in 2005 as the Flannery O’Connor Professor of Letters. His poems are often concerned with the relationship of the self to others and, in his later work, its relation to the natural world.

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To Dorothy

You are not beautiful, exactly. 

You are beautiful, inexactly. 

You let a weed grow by the mulberry 

And a mulberry grow by the house. 

So close, in the personal quiet 

Of a windy night, it brushes the wall 

And sweeps away the day till we sleep. 

A child said it, and it seemed true: 

‘Things that are lost are all equal.’ 

But it isn’t true. If I lost you, 

The air wouldn’t move, nor the tree grow. 

Someone would pull the weed, my flower. 

The quiet wouldn’t be yours. If I lost you, 

I’d have to ask the grass to let me sleep.


The Self and the Mulberry

I wanted to see the self, so I looked at the mulberry. 

It had no trouble accepting its limits, 

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Sponsored

yet defining and redefining a small area 

so that any shape was possible, any movement. 

It stayed put, but was part of all the air. 

I wanted to learn to be there and not there 

like the continually changing, slightly moving 

mulberry, wild cherry and particularly the willow. 

Like the willow, I tried to weep without tears. 

Like the cherry tree, I tried to be sturdy and productive. 

Like the mulberry, I tried to keep moving. 

I couldn’t cry right, couldn’t stay or go. 

I kept losing parts of myself like a soft maple. 

I fell ill like the elm. That was the end 

of looking in nature to find a natural self. 

Let nature think itself not manly enough! 

Let nature wonder at the mystery of laughter. 

Let nature hypothesize man’s indifference to it. 

Let nature take a turn at saying what love is!

Marvin Bell

Marvin Bell (1937-2020) was an American poet who was named the first Poet Laureate of Iowa in 2000. Raised on Long Island, NY, he received an MFA form the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he would later teach for 40 years, retiring in 2005 as the Flannery O’Connor Professor of Letters. His poems are often concerned with the relationship of the self to others and, in his later work, its relation to the natural world.

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