Theodore Roethke - Elegy For Jane

■Theodore Roethke

 

Theodore Roethke

American poet

(1908 – 1963)

 

 

 

■ LIEN : http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/13

 

 

 

■ ■ ■ In 1908, Theodore Roethke was born in Saginaw, Michigan. As a child, he spent much time in the greenhouse owned by his father and uncle. His impressions of the natural world contained there would later profoundly influence the subjects and imagery of his verse. Roethke graduated magna cum laude from the University of Michigan in 1929. He later took a few graduate classes at Michigan and Harvard, but was unhappy in school. His first book, Open House (1941), took ten years to write and was critically acclaimed upon its publication. He went on to publish sparingly but his reputation grew with each new collection, including The Waking which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1954.LIRE LA SUITE

 

 

 

Elegy For Jane

(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 startled 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.

 

 

 

 

-------------------------  (ELEGY FOR JANE)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Theodore Roethke
THE UNOFFICIAL SITE

http://gawow.com/roethke/poems/