National Poetry Month

[brigdh]

Elegy for Jane by Theodore Roethke

(My student, thrown by a horse)



I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils; 

And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile;

And how, once started into talk, the light syllables leaped for her. 

And she balanced in the delight of her thought,

A wren, happy, tail into the wind, 

Her song trembling the twigs and small branches.

The shade sang with her; 

The leaves, their whispers turned to kissing, 

And the mould sang in the bleached valleys under the rose.



Oh, when she was sad, she cast herself down into such a pure depth,

Even a father could not find her:

Scraping her cheek against straw,

Stirring the clearest water. 

My sparrow, you are not here, 

Waiting like a fern, making a spiney shadow.

The sides of wet stones cannot console me, 

Nor the moss, wound with the last light. 



If only I could nudge you from this sleep,

My maimed darling, my skittery pigeon. 

Over this damp grave I speak the words of my love:

I, with no rights in this matter, 

Neither father nor lover.