from Liza Bennett

Dear Patty:
Just wanted you to know that we're thinking about you and Richard today.   This, always one of my favorite Roethke poems, seems to perfectly distill my own feelings.





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 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. 

—Theodore Roethke

1 comment:

  1. I love this poem and think the lines that ring true about Elizabeth are

    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

    How wonderful LIza that you thought of her that way, she who was your namesake.

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How Dina Aunty relished her memories. Mummy and Daddy were the same, talking about their yesterdays and smiling in that sad-happy way while selecting each picture, each frame from the past, examining it lovingly before it vanished again in the mist. But nobody ever forgot anything, not really, though sometimes they pretended, when it suited them. Memories were permanent. Sorrowful ones remained sad even with the passing of time, yet happy ones could never be re-created—not with the same joy. Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain.

> From A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry