Nine poems by the American poet Theodore Roethke appeared in the TLS between 1954, when "Elegy for Jane" was the second of them, and 1964, the year after Roethke's death. One of his best-known poems, "Elegy for Jane" sees Roethke in his element, lyrical and lamenting, rather than harping on one of the "major" themes that increasingly gained prominence in his writing. (See, for example, Ian Hamilton's section on Roethke in Against Oblivion for an assessment of the poet's misuse of his gifts.)

The bird imagery may border on absurdity, as Jane flits from wren to sparrow to pigeon, but these flickering snapshot metamorphoses find a weighty counterpoint in the spondees ("pure depth", "wet stones") that litter the poem gravely. And "Elegy for Jane" complicates itself further by raising the question, as good elegies often do, of the elegist's role. The narrator claims to have "no rights" in this "matter" – a punning euphemism – but at the poem's end, his unauthorized speaking at the graveside ("I . . . / Neither father nor lover"), his bravura act of remembrance, would seem to matter more to him than Jane herself. The rest, it would seem, is far from being silence.

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 words of my love:
I, with no rights in this matter,
Neither father nor lover.

THEODORE ROETHKE (1954)

To read last week's Poem of the Week, "Attack on the Ad-Man" by A. S. J. Tessimond, click here.

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