Lines for Roethke Twenty Years after His Death

by Duane Niatum (Salish)

I
You asked us to hear the softest vocable of wind,
whether slow or swift, rising or falling to earth,
its fragments will drop in to place in the end.
You said, believe, endure, the ironies of birth!
If we succeeded in sleeping like thorns on a rose,
the nerves awake to the pulse, folklore of the sun,
the interior drifts may loosen, the nights freeze,
the passions whirl, not ramble until undone.
And noone colors the years black, but crow,
retouches the ruins, fakes the moon, pocks the beach.
Laugh right back, you sang, let it take hold,
it’ll grow bored, forget whoever is in reach.
Let your hand trace the riddle on the wave
rejoice in the tale that leaves the ear a cave.

II

To give each death its light reflects the maze.
The promise bacteria also favor green.
You secretly burned your tracks to fan the blaze,
and warned the world’ll tell what to dream.
This is why you spoke in tongues to the vine,
wren, snail, bear, sloth, and swamp air.
You almost found an island without decline,
where roots kept your soul exposed to every layer.
You suggested we see the spirit’s gift in the eye,
but the eye in the gut, the slug in the mossy field.
Taught us ghosts can love as well as mortify,
yet the heart’s the actor; we must bow and yield.
When your body’s a wheat impulse, nothing’s stale;
even thunder’s crack is music to the whale.

III
The mind follows currents deeper than any fish,
gropes with otter and duck for food in the river,
it knows water tumbling over rocks restores the flesh,
awaits the moon in the poplars, its first cover―
to meet extremes face to face, seed to seed,
be anonymous as a fly’s grave at dark.
Fill solitude with creatures other than your need;
let the wolf take your shade, teach you to bark.
How to breathe with form? Proceed like the worm;
help desire cross the bridge of the brain;
it relieves paralysis, the wrong turn.
Kiss the petals before and after rain.
Climb out of yourself; edge in close to fate;
smell mortality like the lily on the lake.

IV
You scolded, we can’t spin the wheel that spins night,
can’t shed the scars from birth like old skin.
Better drift in your bones than with the kite;
better croak with bluejay, picking at the limb.
An imagination swims for the Muse on her shell,
while her tribe tickles our inner ear.
Don’t mistake; her cymbals taught the devil;
as she dances , he shreds like pulp all year
so we dream, barter seasons with the dead,
if we accept when they embrace, they cling.
All’s headless as love, you sighed, all shapes you wed,
your senses burnt-orange, bold stranger to nothing
but yourself, your lips as white as Michigan snow.
Show us again how to reap the fire and glow.