I think the dead are tender. Shall we kiss? —
My lady laughs, delighting in what is.
If she but sighs, a bird puts out its tongue.
She makes space lonely with a lovely song.
She lilts a low soft language, and I hear
Down long sea-chambers of the inner ear.
We sing together; we sing mouth to mouth.
The garden is a river flowing south.
She cries out loud the soul’s own secret joy;
She dances, and the ground bears her away.
She knows the speech of light, and makes it plain
A lively thing can come to life again.
I feel her presence in the common day,
In that slow dark that widens every eye.
She moves as water moves, and comes to me,
Stayed by what was, and pulled by what would be.
Whilst looking for a slug poem a friend had told me about, I came across this poem today. How arresting the first line appears! And what an intimate, physically responsive, physically knowing poem too! I cannot pretend to understand the poem but somehow this does not matter. Understanding can be overrated and can be misleading as it convinces us of meaning when somehow, something less certain, more fragile and tentative may liberate us from the burdensome constraints of mere ‘knowing’.
My favourite line is ‘She makes space lonely…’ and this resonates and yet once again, I cannot say with any certainty that I know why. But I do know I like the way the words work with each other and the curious harmony of every word’s intimate connection. Perhaps Roethke is exploring the interconnectedness of everything and the resonant connection of word and emotion when romantic love finds expression through a physical intimacy expressed everywhere. ‘She’ is everywhere and that is the magic of this wonderful poem.