Thursday, March 03, 2005

 

For the fasting season, my favorite spiritual-type poem. It's by Roethke, whom no one ever talks about, like "he just wrote garden poems," or whatever. Viva el Roethke!, I say. His poems stick with me. He wavers between a complex doubt backed by complex, technically proficient rhythms and an almost saccharine childlikeness that smacks of outsider art. It beguiles me.


In Evening Air


1
A dark theme keeps me here,
Though summer blazes in the vireo's eye.
Who would be half possessed
By his own nakedness?
Waking's my care --
I'll make a broken music, or I'll die.

2
Ye littles, lie more close!
Make me, O Lord, a last, a simple thing
Time cannot overwhelm.
Once I transcended time :
A bud broke to a rose,
And I rose from a last diminishing.

3
I look down the far light
And I behold the dark side of a tree
Far down a billowing plain,
And when I look again,
It's lost upon the night --
Night I embrace, a dear proximity.

4
I stand by a low fire
Counting the wisps of flame, and I watch how
Light shifts upon the wall.
I bid stillness be still.
I see, in evening air,
How slowly dark comes down on what we do.

posted by Reen |link| 0 comments

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -