AN EVENING WITH TED ROETHKE
245
These sweeps of light undo me.
Look, look, the ditch is running white!
I've more veins than a tree!
Kiss me, ashes, I'm falling through a dark
swirl
4. The Return
The way to the boiler was dark,
Dark all the way,
Over slippery cinders
Through the long greenhouse.
The roses kept breathing in the dark.
They had many mouths to breathe with.
My knees made little winds underneath
Where the weeds slept.
There was always a single light
Swinging by the fire-pit,
Where the fireman pulled out roses,
The big roses, the big bloody clinkers.
Once I stayed all night.
The light in the morning came slowly over
the white
Snow.
There were many kinds of cool
Air.
Then came steam.
Pipe-knock.
Scurry of warm over small plants.
Ordnung! ordnung!
Papa is coming!
A fine haze moved off the leaves;
Frost melted on far panes;
The rose, the chrysanthemum turned toward
the light.
Even the hushed forms, the bent yellowy
weeds
Moved in a slow up-sway.
5. "It was beginning winter"
It was beginning winter,
An in-between time,
The landscape still partly brown:
The bones of weeds kept swinging in the wind,
Above the blue snow.
It was beginning winter,
The light moved slowly over the frozen field,
Over the dry seed-crowns,
The beautiful surviving bones
Swinging in the wind.
Light traveled over the wide field;
Stayed.
The weeds stopped swinging.
The mind moved, not alone,
Through the clear air, in the silence.
Was it light?
Was it light within?
Was it light within light?
Stillness becoming alive,
Yet still?
A lively understandable spirit
Once entertained you.
It will come again.
Be still.
Wait.
MR. BURROWS MORLEY: We did receive a
telegram tonight from Ted's widow, Beatrice
Roethke. She had exams today, she's back in
school again in California. She had two
exams today and has to go to Seattle tomorrow evening, and the telegram said,
"May all my best wishes be with you
throughout the evening."
