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Theodore Roethke - 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.

Added: on August 18th, 2005 at 2:07 AM | Viewed: 8827 times | Comments (5)


Elegy For Jane - Comments and Information

Poet: Theodore Roethke
Poem: Elegy For Jane

Poem of the Day on:
Feb 13 2006

Comment 5 of 5, added on May 2nd, 2006 at 4:39 PM.

i think that the teacher's love for his student is moderately inappropriate. the words he uses to describe her seem to be more that any other teacher would say. the way he noticed the curls that fell delicately on her neck etc. a little inappropraite...

Katie from United States
Comment 4 of 5, added on March 10th, 2006 at 6:02 PM.

It is all so fragile, this sensuous life, and Ted Roethe celebrates both. Watch his breath, yours as you read outloud. The vegetable world, air, the world of humans, horses, of feeling and idea are all interwoven. As they are.

And he hates death. Three 'no's" in the last couplet: no rights--he/we have no right to deny death, though we would do so; neither father, nor lover. Three no's. And if his is neither, then his words of love are deeper: love for life: fragile and tender; hers, his, yours, ours. For that which leapt in her, once.

When we are born aren't we all soon "startled into talk"? And look at the difference between saying "her light syllables leapt" and they "leapt for her." Words are alive and in some indefineable way a child of the heart, as we all are, truly, for each other. As art is.

And the mind, down where she was cast is clear water. Not smudged with ideologies of sin or smeared with predelictions of complexes. Even a father could not find her there. Not writing 'even her father'. A father, any father. This living person transcends everything, in beauty, in complexity, in pain, in mind. As we do. As we are.

Finally she is not here, and it is the end of day. The moss is "wound with the last light" but look at it again, for the light is dimming and it is harder to see. Wound / wound. As in hurt. Poetry can say several things at once: wound (hurt) with the last light. As the end of all things.

Once her syllables were light. Now the last light syllable is a wound: no. no. no. May it be only a sleep.




Barnard from United States
Comment 3 of 5, added on August 18th, 2005 at 2:07 AM.

this is a poem about love--the love of a teacher for a student, a student lost from life and remembered as if a tiny bird, fragile gentile and of whom the movements and song can only be found in the memory recalling the departed child

umendadez from Lithuania

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Poem Info

Elegy For Jane

Last read:
2008-07-06 04:51:38
Poem of the Day on:
Feb 13 2006
Viewed 8827 times.

Added on August 18th, 2005 at 2:07 AM.


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