Theodore Roethke - The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke

Collected Poems The Far Field I Am! Says the Lamb Words for the Wind The Waking Praise to the End! The Lost Son and Other Poems Open House Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke 194363 selected and arranged by David Wagoner F OR C HILDREN : Party at the Zoo S ELECTED P ROSE : On the Poet and His Craft
edited by Ralph B. Mills, Jr. S ELECTED L ETTERS OF T HEODORE R OETHKE
edited by Ralph B. Mills, Jr.The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke was originally published by Doubleday & Company, Inc. The Anchor Books edition is published by arrangement with Doubleday. Anchor Books edition: 1975 eISBN: 978-0-307-76047-0 Copyright 1937, 1954, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966 by Beatrice Roethke as Administratrix of the Estate of Theodore Roethke
Copyright 1932, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1961 by Theodore Roethke. All Rights Reserved.

Printed in the United States of America Many of the poems in this collection appeared originally in The New Yorker and Poetry. Others appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Saturday Review, N IGHT C ROW , Copyright 1944 by Saturday Review Association, Inc., The Atlantic Monthly, T HE D ANCE , Copyright 1952 by the Atlantic Monthly Company, T HE E XULTING , H IS W ORDS , M EMORY , T HE W ALL , W HAT N OW ?, Copyright 1956 by Atlantic Monthly Co., Yale Review, The American Scholar, B IG W IND , Copyright 1947 by The United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa, The New Republic, C ARNATIONS , C HILD ON T OP OF A G REEN H OUSE , F LOWER -D UMP , W EED P ULLER , M OSS -G ATHERING , Copyright 1946 by Editorial Publications, Inc., E LEGY , L OVES P ROGRESS , T HE S HIMMER OF E VIL , S LUG , Copyright 1955 by New Republic, Inc., The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Commonweal, D OUBLE F EATURE AS E PISODE S EVEN , Copyright 1942 by Commonweal Publishing Co., Inc., The Tigers Eye, A F IELD OF L IGHT , Copyright 1948 by The Tigers Eye, The Sewanee Review, J UDGE N OT , Copyright 1947 by The University of the South, Harpers Bazaar, M Y P APAS W ALTZ , Copyright 1942 by Hearst Magazines, Inc., and L AST W ORDS , Copyright 1946 by Hearst Magazines, Inc., Harpers, O LD F LORIST , Copyright 1946 by Harper & Brothers, American Mercury, P ICKLE B ELT , Copyright 1943 by The American Mercury, Inc., Partisan Review, Botteghe Oscure, T HE O THER , Copyright 1956 by Botteghe Oscure, H ER B ECOMING , Copyright 1958 by Botteghe Oscure, The Hudson Review, The Kenyon Review, I W AITED , Copyright 1956 by Kenyon College, Poems in Folio, Flair, Landmarks and Voyages. The Poetry Society Supplement for 1957, Poetry London-New York, Encounter, New World Writing, Ladies Home Journal, Poetry Northwest, New Poems by American Poets, No. 2, The Pocket Book of Modern Verse, Folkways Album No. FL 9736, and Critical Quarterly. v3.1

This volume contains all the poems from previous books by Theodore Roethke, except Party at the Zoo, which was written expressly for children. There are as well sixteen previously uncollected poems, selected from a considerable number of unpublished poems. These additional pieces, dating from 1943 to 1962, are arranged in approximate chronological order. In The Far Field, the sections entitled North American Sequence and Sequence, Sometimes Metaphysical are, in content and order, as arranged by Theodore Roethke in the original manuscript.

The other sections in that book were altered slightly to withhold for later publication two of the pub songs, The Saginaw Song and Gob Musicpieces that did not seem appropriate in a last book of poemsand to add Wish for a Young Wife and The Tranced, one of the last poems Theodore Roethke wrote. I am greatly indebted to several friends of my husband, and to Frank Jones and Stanley Kunitz in particular, for their valuable advice and suggestions. BEATRICE ROETHKE

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My secrets cry aloud. I have no need for tongue. My heart keeps open house, My doors are widely swung. An epic of the eyes My love, with no disguise.

My truths are all foreknown, This anguish self-revealed. Im naked to the bone, With nakedness my shield. Myself is what I wear: I keep the spirit spare. The anger will endure, The deed will speak the truth In language strict and pure. I stop the lying mouth: Rage warps my clearest cry To witless agony.

Corruption reaps the young; you dread The menace of ancestral eyes; Recoiling from the serpent head Of fate, you blubber in surprise.

Exhausted fathers thinned the blood, You curse the legacy of pain; Darling of an infected brood, You feel disaster climb the vein. Theres canker at the root, your seed Denies the blessing of the sun, The light essential to your need. Your hopes are murdered and undone. The dead leap at the throat, destroy The meaning of the day; dark forms Have scaled your walls, and spies betray Old secrets to amorphous swarms. You meditate upon the nerves, Inflame with hate. This ancient feud Is seldom won.

The spirit starves Until the dead have been subdued.

Invention sleeps within a skull No longer quick with light, The hive that hummed in every cell Is now sealed honey-tight. His thought is tied, the curving prow Of motion moored to rock; And minutes burst upon a brow Insentient to shock. Diffuse the outpourings of the spiritual coward, The rambling lies invented for the sick. O see the fate of him whose guard was lowered! A single misstep and we leave the quick. Flesh behind steel and glass is unprotected From enemies that whisper to the blood; The scratch forgotten is the scratch infected; The ruminant, reason, chews a poisoned cud.

Platitudes garnished beyond a fools gainsaying; The scheme without purpose; pride in a furnished room; The mediocre busy at betraying Themselves, their parlors musty as a funeral home. Though the devouring mother cry, Escape me? Never And the honeymoon be spoiled by a fathers ghost, Chill depths of the spirit are flushed to a fever, The nightmare silence is broken. We are not lost.

O my sister remember the stars the tears the trains The woods in spring the leaves the scented lanes Recall the gradual dark the snows unmeasured fall The naked fields the clouds immaculate folds Recount each childhood pleasure: the skies of azure The pageantry of wings the eyes bright treasure. Keep faith with present joys refuse to choose Defer the vice of flesh the irrevocable choice Cherish the eyes the proud incredible poise Walk boldly my sister but do not deign to give Remain secure from pain preserve thy hate thy heart. Walking this field I remember Days of another summer.

Oh that was long ago! I kept Close to the heels of my father, Matching his stride with half-steps Until we came to a river. He dipped his hand in the shallow: Water ran over and under Hair on a narrow wrist bone; His image kept following after, Flashed with the sun in the ripple. But when he stood up, that face Was lost in a maze of water.

The element of air was out of hand. The rush of wind ripped off the tender leaves And flung them in confusion on the land. We waited for the first rain in the eaves.