(no subject)
The Unnoted Affair
(Italics taken from the notebooks of Theodore Roethke)
This horny skin. I buckle with waves
And roast in fire. Suppose a rock should sneeze
Me loose, unfasten me from earth before
My time and I went burning with the hay?
What breeds beneath my seat, or just above
My temples? These are sly matters waiting for a look
Behind the eye.
And if you call me tonight, I will not answer.
I will ignore it, like when people ignore a travesty
By turning their heads to the mugging of a bum
Or would rather not listen to the inconvenience
Of a woman getting raped like the plundering
Of land for this paper that I forget upon.
But I found myself wondering
In the deep dead of that night, I laughed for a love,
And I quickened that I should die.
By these deprivations of spirit and sense
By the moans I have never heard,
But yearned that I have.
That I would forget the sweat between
Our chest and shoulders, that I could
Un-remember your slow yet frantic lips.
Her flesh laid siege to my breath
As it labored on the back of her neck.
What heavenly candle flickers in my flesh
Faltering toward another shade?
You’re welcome to my ways, she said.
I want a flower’s outwardness, she said.
She said a lot, but she also didn’t say much
She was thinking for me,
Thinking the things I should not think
About this night, on this bed my parents
Probably conceived me on…
The moment came; that moment came again
And I looked forth upon the glittering sea:
In the bright noon I saw her gleaming skin
A mirror of my own mortality.
We look before and after, and,
Like Shelley, rarely understand.
(Italics taken from the notebooks of Theodore Roethke)
This horny skin. I buckle with waves
And roast in fire. Suppose a rock should sneeze
Me loose, unfasten me from earth before
My time and I went burning with the hay?
What breeds beneath my seat, or just above
My temples? These are sly matters waiting for a look
Behind the eye.
And if you call me tonight, I will not answer.
I will ignore it, like when people ignore a travesty
By turning their heads to the mugging of a bum
Or would rather not listen to the inconvenience
Of a woman getting raped like the plundering
Of land for this paper that I forget upon.
But I found myself wondering
In the deep dead of that night, I laughed for a love,
And I quickened that I should die.
By these deprivations of spirit and sense
By the moans I have never heard,
But yearned that I have.
That I would forget the sweat between
Our chest and shoulders, that I could
Un-remember your slow yet frantic lips.
Her flesh laid siege to my breath
As it labored on the back of her neck.
What heavenly candle flickers in my flesh
Faltering toward another shade?
You’re welcome to my ways, she said.
I want a flower’s outwardness, she said.
She said a lot, but she also didn’t say much
She was thinking for me,
Thinking the things I should not think
About this night, on this bed my parents
Probably conceived me on…
The moment came; that moment came again
And I looked forth upon the glittering sea:
In the bright noon I saw her gleaming skin
A mirror of my own mortality.
We look before and after, and,
Like Shelley, rarely understand.