POETRY

“The Third Body” is about both personal and spiritual love and speaks to us with profound 

and quiet language about the potential of love that does not deny physical intimacy, but 

includes more than that. They are content to be where they are, talking or not talking. This 

is a mature kind of love that is content within itself and does not long for anything other 

than what it is. When two people enter into a conscious love relationship, a door opens, 

and the two become three, as the Divine, Someone we know of, whom we have never seen 

enters the relationship.  

—Parthenia Hicks

Robert Bly's most recent book of poetry is Talking into the Ear of a Donkey: Poems. He has 

written more than thirty books of poetry, and numerous books of nonfiction, as well as 

translations. He is a winner of the National Book Award and two Guggenheims and lives 

in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Parthenia M. Hicks, M. Div. is the Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, CA and Enlightenment Journal's  

poetry editor. Her most recent publications include The Call: An Anthology of Women’s Writing and  

Sweet Obsession: The Art of Lynn Powers. 
 

The Third Body

by Robert Bly

A man and a woman sit near each other, and they do 
     not long
At this moment to be older, or younger, or born
In any other nation, or any other time, or any other
     place.
They are content to be where they are, talking or not 
     talking.
Their breaths together feed someone whom we do 
     not know.
The man sees the way his fingers move;
He sees her hands close around a book she hands to 
     him.
They obey a third body they have in common.
They have made a promise to love that body.
Age may come, parting may come, death will come!
A man and woman sit near each other;
As they breathe they feed someone we do not know, 
Someone we know of, whom we have never seen.