Elegy for Jane (Poem, by 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 into kissing;
And the mold sang in the bleached valley 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 the straw;
Stirring the clearest water.

¨
My sparrow, you are not here,
Waiting like a fern, making a spiny 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