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"Last night you lay a-sleeping? No!
The room was thirty-five below;
The sheets and blankets turned to snow.
MHe'd got in: Dirty Dinky."
Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), U.S. poet. Dinky (l. 13-16). . .
Oxford Book of American Light Verse, The. William Harmon, ed. (1979) Oxford University Press. |
"And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,"
Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), U.S. poet. Dolor (l. 9-11). . .
Oxford Book of Short Poems, The. P. J. Kavanagh and James Michie, eds. Oxford University Press. |
"I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper-weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,"
Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), U.S. poet. Dolor (l. 1-4). . .
Oxford Book of Short Poems, The. P. J. Kavanagh and James Michie, eds. Oxford University Press. |
"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."
Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), U.S. poet. Elegy for Jane (l. 18-22). . .
Norton Anthology of Poetry, The. Alexander W. Allison and others, eds. (3d ed., 1983) W. W. Norton & Company. |
"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."
Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), U.S. poet. Elegy for Jane (l. 1-4). . .
Norton Anthology of Poetry, The. Alexander W. Allison and others, eds. (3d ed., 1983) W. W. Norton & Company. |
"Like witches they flew along rows
Keeping creation at ease;
With a tendril for needle
They sewed up the air with a stem;"
Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), U.S. poet. Frau Bauman, Frau Schmidt, and Frau Schwartze (l. 19-22). . .
Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, The. Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair, eds. (2d ed., 1988) W. W. Norton & Company. |
"I remember how they picked me up, a spindly kid,
Pinching and poking my thin ribs
Till I lay in their laps, laughing,
Weak as a whiffet;"
Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), U.S. poet. Frau Bauman, Frau Schmidt, and Frau Schwartze (l. 26-29). . .
Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, The. Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair, eds. (2d ed., 1988) W. W. Norton & Company. |
"I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one;"
Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), U.S. poet. I Knew a Woman (l. 1-3). . .
Norton Anthology of Poetry, The. Alexander W. Allison and others, eds. (3d ed., 1983) W. W. Norton & Company. |
"She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing we did make)."
Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), U.S. poet. I Knew a Woman (l. 12-15). . .
Norton Anthology of Poetry, The. Alexander W. Allison and others, eds. (3d ed., 1983) W. W. Norton & Company. |
"I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)"
Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), U.S. poet. I Knew a Woman (l. 25-28). . .
Norton Anthology of Poetry, The. Alexander W. Allison and others, eds. (3d ed., 1983) W. W. Norton & Company. |
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Theodore Roethke
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