Edward Smith was born in Foochow, China, to ?? and Lucia Smith, Presbyterian ministers who left as World War Two started, return afterward and left china permanently in 1949 during the conclusion of the Maoist Revolution. Smith attended San Diego High school, graduating in 1960 and received a full-ride scholarship to Harvard to study Chinese. Due in part to an unrealized romance with Myrna Wosk who was attending nearby Amherst, Smith left Harvard and joined the Army with the intention of studying Chinese at the Army language school in Monterey, California.
He was remanded with many others into a crash course in Vietnamese where he met the artist, poet and linguist, Paul Hansen, and spent his military career as a translator in Vietnam, honorably discharged in 1965. He attended the University of California at Berkeley briefly. He married Elaine Kaufman of Glendale and enrolled in the Chinese program of the Far Eastern Department at the University of Washington in 1966.
Following a long-time love of poetry and literature, he enrolled in a course entitled "Poetry— Language—Now," taught by Charles Potts and Jack Large, at the newly formed Free University of Seattle which was modeled on the one began in Berkeley as an upshot to the Free Speech Movement. By the third meeting of the class, Smith was presenting great poetry such as "The Queen of the Blue Fox" and "Josie Bakungan" which poems immediately found their way into the mimeo magazine Litmus, edited by Charles Potts.
Edward Smith gave one of his rare public readings in February 1967 at Seattle's Pike Place market, in a venue operated by Potts and Large, The Zig Zag Gallery and Pot Shop. Smith remained in close contact with Potts, answering the Litmus mail and tending to the Post office box when Potts returned to Mexico and subsequently moved to Berkeley. Smith published additional poetry during this time in the magazine Copkiller, edited by Darlene Fife and Robert Head in New Orleans.
The revolting developments of 1968 created a rupture in the lives of Edward and Elaine Smith and their response to the social and political chaos in the United States was to become Christian Ministers in the Bible Reform Church, an offshoot of Reform Methodism. Hearing of Charles Potts' incarceration in the psychiatric ward at the University of Utah hospital, he traveled from Seattle to Salt Lake to visit his friend in December 1969. January 1970 Potts traveled to Boise, Idaho to hear his friend preach.
Two books of Edward Smith's poetry were published by Litmus Inc. in Salt Lake in the 1970s, The Flutes ofGama in 1971, preprinted in 1975, and Going, a book of poems on Christian and musical themes. Smith moved from Sunnyvale, California, to Iowa City, Iowa, feeling a call to minister to the students there. A daughter Leah was born to the Smiths in 1972. during the Iowa period, "Josie Bakungan" was anthologized by Morty Sklar in Editor's Choice: Literature & Graphics from the U.S. Small Press, 1965-1977, from The Spirit That Moves Us Press.
After fifteen years as a minister, Smith returned to the secular life and lived in the Los Angeles area for many years, where he wrote a novel, ???. In ??? he married Cindy ??? from whom he was subsequently divorced. Lindsay Smith was born in 1998??. In 2001, after a twenty-five hiatus, he googled Charles Potts and they resumed a vital exchange culminating in Edward Smith's appearance at the 2003 Walla Walla Poetry Party in October. Smith wrote the introduction to The Ghost ofHarrison Sheets by Jeremy Gaulke and had composed insightful critiques of Theodore Roethke and Sharon Doubiago. Living in Belleville, Illinois, Smith contracted the flu in December and died at St. Elizabeth's Hospital of epiglottitus and complications the day after Christmas in 2003. He was at work on a play, "Mencius in San Diego" at the time of his death.
TRANSPARENT ALWAYS for Holly [one: the text] back in the 60’s PL, the approximately Maoist component of SDS, said join the military because we must share the experiences of our generation, or was it Spartacist, one of ‘em I can’t remember my point being that’s what I’ve gone & done or darn near, which makes me some kind of authority on practically everything there is, for example, this poetry, simple with deep feeling no longer than it has to be refuting the wacky nonsense of as many academic birdbrains as could dance on the tailpipe of the Harley-Davidson driven by the Adonis of Denver and all his wordy, wordy friends posing with chicks for their photos in four-for-a-buck booths somewhere churning out turgid ragas of verbose verbology entering the academy sideways later on some odd bureaucratic dole— this poetry, I say, better than Ezra, eclipsing a civilization down on its luck, having spent most of 200 years, since “Lyrical Ballads” was published, slowly losing its nerve that’s one, then there’s the corporate hesitation, fired again and again, for building people—give a man a fish and he’ll write a glowing description of the fishing industry, teach a man to fish & we’ll fire his ass because he won’t need us any more Thank you, Fish Incorporated for your mendacious misappropriation of Drucker & Tom Peters visit me in the garden of the new Voltaire that’s two, then the church—leaving aside its great, utterly orthodox doctrine of the office work of the Holy Spirit, convicting, converting, guiding, reproving, comforting & healing— insisted on doing everything itself as follows: come unto me, all you who labor with burdens, and I will give you more burdens, more labor never take it easy work your butts off there are a few, just a few tickets to paradise left that’s three, and then may I just mention briefly everybody’s bad attitude? [two: the dream] as I drove through the country from Millstadt to Columbia this morning trying to see as Du Fu, Su Shi saw twiggy groves jumbled against wisps of cloud blue Harvestores dwarfing a 30’s bungalow and what these views said of me who drove beside them the mind reaching out, in after the nature of what is true— the thoughts of so many entertain willed disorder which may at times be exciting but abandons our children to chaotic dreams Stephen called from Albuquerque he teaches tenth graders Shakespeare he’s still alive in his early 60’s we laughed about the caftan party where he astonished the guests— a West Hollywood Jesus in 1970 with long, dark brown beard & hair— & met a man he fell in love with fifteen years before the AIDS epidemic thank God he’s still alive lifting his kids to art, kids who are his ageless Dorian Grays as he ages like Dorian’s picture and I’m alive too and aging like Stephen emailing young poets with eternal news keeping it sweet & simple our transparent always dang ve que cua long minh returning to the hometown of my heart hiking with Karen in a Cascades dream sipping cold water from a spring in the Cuyamacas with Clair, he is gone he is forever here and I ache for Karen who is after all writing again for Eugene who is old enough not to be easily encouraged for Sidley who is riding horses & saving her pennies I hope she is singing for Evelyn, surrounded by mirrors still trying to impress somebody the question is, who? for Lona, shivering in the winds of El Paso comforting Chicano children whose daddies are at war and I ache for Dawn with the bad, bad stuff in her blood may it be lifted, filtered, vanished by the power of love for Roberta, dying of cancer for Margaret, cleaning teeth who has no money for travel for Bill Payne, who had me in his sights, but I survived for my enemies—all— whose names are remembered, forgotten Pat Wagner, John, another John Serruys, S.J., the VC Robert Creeley, with his shallow, need-driven definition of love, O lift him in the mercy of the Great Buddha out of the dual raging neon-busted sandstorm to the one great gift of “be” and I ache for Joe who stuffed the past and has become so much more that it hurts him to talk to me may the power of love collapse him, free him and may you who read this, hear this, listen to the difficulties it presents turn it over in your hands, may it sing to you of your own intense beauty may it hurt you as it hurts those who love you as it hurts me to write it not knowing through what deaths it will be going but knowing we are together at the end of everything in your back garden somewhere resting beneath the midnight stars drinking margaritas & toasting the spring moon April 1 to May 19, 2003
DEAD GEESE: a close reading of Theodore Roethke’s “I Knew a Woman”
Roethke’s “I Knew a Woman” fails to produce the woman. It has a sloppiness unfortunately too typical of many of this poet’s productions. After he asserts the fact of knowing this woman, his first attempt at description is “lovely in her bones.” I guess this could mean that her loveliness was founded on good bone structure. There are two problems with this though. The phrase, seemingly chosen mostly for its sound, is empty. It is vacant of real description. The discordant image of a skeleton, maybe with an x-ray of the same, comes unbidden. This is typical of Roethke’s unfortunate lack of control. He lets other meanings of the words he uses hijack the poem. In line two, stanza one, he has small birds “sighing”. This only makes sense as some form of surrealism—but since the poem is otherwise lacking other surrealist touches—we are forced to conclude that the “sighing of birds” is merely inept.
In the third line, first stanza, Roethke attempts the vernacular—“she moved more ways than one.” His lack of any ear for the vernacular sabotages this effort. The phrase, “more ways than one,” as it is used by fluent or native English speakers, means approximately “more ways than you’re expecting,” or “more ways than you seem to think I’m capable of.” These are not applicable meanings here. As readers, or hearers, we’re in the poem’s third line, and we’re all ears, rooting for the poet to do well. If the poet has a chip on his shoulder, something of this nature to “prove,” then he’s simply being unreasonable. At this point, more likely, Roethke is using the phrase in its prima facie meaning of “a number of ways.” Problem is, this usage is unknown in speech, to the best of my knowledge. I conclude that this phrase, in its setting, is likely nothing but filler.
The colon which ends line three, stanza one, leads one to expect that line four will be describing in detail some of the ways the woman moves. Disappointingly, line four is entirely static…no movement at all. Its main verb is “contain”—the subject of which is nothing more than its echo, “container.” Roethke seems to have picked up the device of using two forms of the same word in the same line (see also a poem like “In A Dark Time). This ploy, if used aptly, can be very effective. A good example can be found in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116.
CXVI.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Shakespeare’s lines contain all the dynamism that Roethke’s lack. He describes love by stating what it is not—which is to say, it is not mutable. The active verbs, “bends” and “alters” carry the weight of what is being said. The effect Shakespeare arrives at, through this device, is effective emphasis on the action words, and their derivatives. Roethke’s noun, “shapes” is vague, and does not carry similar weight. The static nature of this line is jarring, given the expectation of movement, coming from the previous line.
In line five, stanza one, “choice virtues” are unexampled—not to be found anywhere in the rest of the poem. Indeed, the poet tells us that only gods should speak of them!—and he (Roethke) is not a god. “Choice” is mere filler, and the complete phrase, “choice virtues” is hopelessly trite, sure to be circled on a freshman essay.
The bizarre vaudeville of “English poets” brought up on Greek, who are “singing in a chorus cheek to cheek” is an insufferable cartoon. This little routine has precisely nothing to do with anything, especially with the poem’s subject. I’d call it an awkward bow to what Roethke often turns into his true métier and subject—vaudeville-like entertainment. Tone-wise, at this point, the poem lurches completely out of control.
One of the most important, critical skills that a poet, or any writer, may possess is the ability to set a tone, control it, and then, if necessary, modulate with great care and skill. Roethke, sadly, allows words, and tricks they can be made to perform, to commandeer the poem. Poet, in regard to its Greek root, means maker—the very Greek those hoofer-poets grew up on, at least to let Roethke tell it. But what does Roethke do? He often, passively, lets the words “make” him.
Consider, at the beginning of stanza two, “how well her wishes went.” This, once again, is exactly wrong. “Wishes” is dead wrong for the woman, the subject of the poem. If anyone is “wishin & hopin & plannin & schemin”, in the words of the old rock ‘n roll chestnut, it is the poet, not the woman. The poem represents an attempt to sketch her, and her power over the poet, strictly from her movements, actions. Vis-à-vis the poet, she is completely “other.” Since the poet, evidenced by other lines in the poem, has scarcely a notion of her wishes, thoughts, motives, and so on—it is lame to assert here that something so completely unknown “went well”. There is no frame of reference for this.
Furthermore—had there been such information in the poem—this statement should have followed it at the end of the stanza. If Roethke feels that the teaching and mowing (which are the woman’s only actions depicted in this stanza), actually are particular facts pertaining to her wishes “going well”—as he seems to—then the statement that they did should follow, not precede. Roethke’s order puts the quod erat demonstrandum first, and the evidence (in my view, of course, invalid) second. This is one more example of sloppy thinking.
Looking again at the phrase, “how well her wishes went,” I feel that we must seek the reason for its inclusion elsewhere. May I suggest that, considering its vapid emptiness of meaning, it obtains admission solely on sound? Since the days of “Beowulf” and Old English, triple alliteration, the so-called kenning, has been a staple of the English poetic line. But traditionally, the alliteration must reinforce strong, meaningful thought thriving inside the poem. Here, due to the insipidity of what is being spoken, it has a drug-like effect—a brief whiff, perhaps, of nitrous oxide. It’s a laughable insult to a great language. “Let’s see how lame we can force you to be—a now less noble tongue than that of Donne and Lovelace, Spenser and Marvell.”
By the way, the tradition, or any acute ear, will inform us that any alliteration within a line which is more than triple—only weakens the line. In the next line we have “she taught me turn and counter-turn and stand.” These are stronger words, which actually mean something. But the effect is vitiated by Roethke’s tin ear. He sadly misses the substantial weakening caused by too much alliteration. There are fully six “t” sounds in this line. That’s twice too many. To sum these two lines up (one and two of stanza two), one is a flopping flat tire of little meaning (only sound), and the second is a stuttering, jarring, too-much-ness, which, (yes!) does contain a smidgen of actual meaning.
In line four, stanza two, what is it in the woman’s hand that the poet is nibbling? How about nothing! The thought, and flow of the poem, such as it is, seems to suggest that the nibbling is of the hand itself. But possibly not, since the poet is so passive, the “flirtation” so peculiar. The observable actions of the poet are about two and a half: this nibbling, raking behind her sickle, and an awkwardness of “eye-dazzling.” It seems pretty likely that the word “from” in this line appears solely for the meter, at the expense of the thought, the sense. Perhaps this is a good place to discuss rhyme and meter. Poets, those that use such formal devices consistently, often say that they use them to keep the material of the poem “under control.” It is noteworthy here that the opposite is the case. The word “from”, used for the iambic pentameter and taking the strong stress in the third iamb, is a verbal pothole, which the line collides with, and is thrown off course by. In the very next line the pentameter seems to require an adjective before the word “sake”. So we get “pretty sake”. In my experience, fluent and native English speakers would never use any adjective here at all, unless it would be a sarcastic or ironic one. I could imagine someone saying “I’ll do it for your stupid sake.” But “pretty” here has to be on the level, so its use here is false and broken. Probably the poet intended to mean, approximately, that he would do this, or pretty much anything, out of deference to her, because of her good looks. But the way he places “pretty” before the word “sake” just whacks the coherence of the discourse.
I have one other thing to say about Roethke’s formal scheme. He deviates from it whenever it suits him. Notice particularly the first four lines of the first stanza—nothing rhymes with anything. This is blank verse, pure and simple. They’re not even off rhymes. Same thing for “moved” at the end of stanza three—no rhyme with “nose” and “repose.” In the final stanza, “hay” and “eternity” are the same sort of thing. The fact that Roethke is willing to ignore his own selected formal structure to this extent—this removes any excuse for not fixing other problems in a similar manner.
When great poets, such as Du Fu or Shakespeare, use a word with multiple meanings, they usually manage to find a way to make all those meanings at home in what’s being said. Second and third tier poets rarely rise to this level, but usually they at least manage not to introduce words where secondary meanings could be jarring or sound outlandish. Bad poets like Roethke don’t have the sense or ear to be able to refrain from such errors. Sometimes they seem to insouciantly welcome such discord—they “get off” on it. Roethke starts getting himself in such trouble starting (in line five, stanza two) with the word “rake.” (Yet we might also say, with some justice, that the title itself starts it—for it is a commonplace of the study of English that the Elizabethans and so-called “Metaphysicals” used “know” in the sense of sex, “carnal knowledge”.)
“Rake” has two relevant meanings here: (1) a garden tool, and (2) a libertine, or womanizer. An excellent poet could have probably written a poem which used this word comfortably in both senses at the same time. Roethke isn’t that good. The next three words, “coming behind her”, introduce a huge discord. The first meaning is easy to visualize. The woman is using a sickle to cut standing grain, while the poet walks behind her, raking the cut stalks into piles. The “rake,” in the second meaning is doing something else, something that that kind of rake might often do. He is having sexual intercourse with the woman from behind, doggy-style, and in fact is having an orgasm, he’s “coming.” This is all very sexy—but the problem is—as I’m sure the woman would say if we could plump her up (like a pillow) to enough coherence to ask her—it’s too soon! The poem shows Roethke being turned on by the woman’s movements and fingertip touches. To jump from that, right straight into an orgasm, using a sexual position which affords the opportunity of deep penetration—this seems awfully close to brutality or rape. There is no hint in the poem of any sort of foreplay, no stroking of breast or thigh, not even any kissing. Thus, we have two choices—either Roethke was such a monk that he didn’t understand what a rake might be up to, once introduced into the poem—or, more believably, he thought he’d made a sexy double-entendre, and looked and heard no more deeply.
Line one of the third stanza introduces a pair of geese, male and female. But they are dead on arrival! In this stanza, by the time we get to anything which might be characteristic of geese (knees), they are long gone. Roethke uses goose and gander as a cutesy, or whimsical way to refer to a human couple. (By the way, another noun in this line is also DOA—“love.” The personification of Love has a long and honorable history—but here it’s just filler. In fact the poem doesn’t even seem to be about love in any available sense at all—but rather about infatuation which derives from touch and movement. At most, love’s prologue.) Giving Roethke the benefit of the doubt, he probably did not realize that, in the context of the rake having from-behind intercourse in the previous stanza, and of the double meaning (which he surely did intend) of gander (as both male goose and a fixated, charged look)—the double meaning of the word goose fairly stomps on the poem! The second meaning is, of course, “a stiff thumb thrust upward between the butt cheeks, aimed at the anus.” Rough child’s play.
If Roethke heard this, knew this, and yet let it in—reinforcing the troubling note of sudden assault—it is feckless, stupid, puzzling, deranged and ultimately boring. Due to the awestruck, almost reverential tone of most of the poem, I prefer to believe it was unconscious. But, either way, it is simply bad poetry. “Adores a goose,” indeed! Of course, no one does.
In line two of the third stanza, the word “lips” adds another joltingly inappropriate note. Rakes retain an interest in both oral and genital female lips. How difficult it is to imagine, however, what the “pursing” of the latter might mean—surely it is a badly chosen moment for a Kegel exercise! And it seems quite impossible for female labia to “seize” any “errant” thing, or object. Any “seizing” would have to be of something by which it had already been penetrated.
Glancing over the material above, in which I demonstrate Roethke’s complete failure to be effectively or cogently naughty—I revert to my fixed opinion concerning the flat badness of his poetry—he refuses to take his craft seriously. His mind offers him hackneyed vaudeville. He has an “act”. “This’ll spice it up,” he thinks. But the spices he adds are ill considered; the dish as served is inedible.
In the next line, line three of stanza three, there are three “T’s” (that’s OK), but four “L’s” (too many). In line four, the intransitive use of “dazzled” is extremely odd. My conjecture is that this usage comes from fiddling with the poem. He may have originally had “her dazzling knees”, and then maybe he turned to tart it up with “dazzled at” and “flowing knees.” Eyes can flow (to what they look at). Knees don’t flow. Somebody tell me what a flowing knee might be. It just does not work. Even if we suppose this to be metonymy (the part standing for the whole), and it is a flowing dance step, it’s the wrong part!—knees pivot, bend, wobble. Thighs, calves, insteps even, we might imagine flowing.
In line six, third stanza, the randy rake tap-dances off stage…finally! The hip, solidly buttressed by the large pelvic bone, is too sturdy to really “quiver”. It is slower, more unyielding than that—which leads to a hint, rakishly, of a second meaning—using “hip” as an adjective meaning “with it”, and using “quiver” metaphorically, for “vagina” (bearing in mind that “vagina” itself is Latin for “scabbard”, a cognate metaphor). Likewise, the “mobile nose” could suggest the rising attitude of the male member in the process of arousal.
How racy! What a burlesque! Hopefully, I’ve demonstrated how it all falls flat. The tone is mish-mash all the way. And we are left, as I stated at the beginning, with no woman. We could never recognize her. Never could say to any woman—“You must have been Roethke’s subject here.” The poem might be a bit of a portrait of Roethke. It does not even begin to show anyone else. The adjectives, nouns, verbs—all are too vague. The tone is too disjunct, too jarring.
Contrasting successful portraiture in poetry could be provided by any number of successful portrait poems, such as Pound’s “Portrait d’une Femme”, which poem does many things right that “I Knew a Woman” does wrong. One example: it ENDS (doesn’t lead!) with its QED…”yet this is you.”
Roethke’s last stanza of this poem is a desperately bad mélange of pseudo-philosophical maunderings. “Seed”? Can it. The rake has skipped town. Looking at “martyr to a motion”—although in Greek “martyr” means any kind of a “witness”—its modern connotation of suffering and maybe dying for a good cause is way too much for this fantasyland of a poem. Roethke isn’t even a martyrlet—and the only pity available is self-pity. Total failure again—“martyr” just lays it on way too strong. “Shadow white as stone” is mere wordplay. “Shadow black as, or green as, stone…”…all would be equally uninspiring. “Stone” has no color; “that particular stone” might—but the poet is too lazy—he scarcely even cares for stones, you see. “Wanton ways” is also empty. At least as far as the woman is concerned, in her actions on whatever level, there are no wanton ways in the poem as a whole. And as to the rape-victim subtext, there are no “wanton ways” in such as that for anyone. A rapist is, of course, far beyond “wanton”. What can be seen of the woman (not much) is gracious, polite, graceful (turn, counterturn, stand, touch), “wanton” she isn’t.
“These old bones live” (line six, stanza four) is an awkward reflection of the “can these bones live” Valley of Dry Bones section of the prophet Ezekiel. This passage in Ezekiel is a parable, or figure, of the reconstituting in independence and strength of the then-exiled nation of Israel. But if Roethke’s aim in this poem is the reconstituting of anything—which it does not appear to be—then he fails. More likely, his echoing of Ezekiel is just another instance of writing with little control, being out of control. The allusion is far from the mark.
John Keats, in his “Grecian Urn” ode, equates truth and beauty. Whatever Keats’ formula there may mean, a legion of thoughtful writers, poets, critics across the centuries have agreed—the poet is a truth-seeker. His or her poem must grow in the rich soil of a love of the truth. When we hear great poetry, we tend to identify with it, or not, on the basis of truth. Great poetry rings true, is true to our experiences, feelings.
In the absence of this horizon, blindly wandering, bad poetry has other fish to fry. It could be an “in” thing. This is what “we” think about; this is how “we” write. Roethke himself had what amounted to a dynasty of this nature in the Seattle of my youth. He dispensed bad advice to his many students, such as “write like someone else.” With this, he won points from neophytes, because that’s what they were going to do anyway, at least for starters. But, as a school, the School of Roethke, which it was, it produced the poetic equivalent of a coterie of Old Master painting fakers. To the contrary, “find your own voice” is the hard way, yet by all means the right way. It’s an inconvenient way, because it often does not happen on a predictable schedule. It impedes mass production of a dreary glut of poetasters. Bad poetry is put to multiple bad uses. The most helpful thing we can do is to identify it as fast as possible. Then it can be quarantined, put under house arrest, jailed for disturbing the peace. Edgar Guest, Robert Service, Ogden Nash, and such, are what they are—their admirers enjoy whatever draws them, but nothing important gets disrupted.
Poetry like that of Roethke is another matter. Its failure to observe common-sense rules of good writing, as found in books like Strunk’s “Elements of Style” frustrates the intentions of teachers who are trying to help their students to learn to write well.
Most perniciously, an acceptance of bad poetry, bad in the way Roethke’s is, lowers the value of all poetry. Bad thoughts creep into young peoples’ minds, such as “poetry does not have to be well-written; command of style and tone doesn’t seem that important (after all, they seem to accept and even praise a poet like Roethke).” It will be lethal for poetry if students in general come to believe that control of style and tone is a valid concept for prose only, that it doesn’t apply to poetry also.
John Malcolm Brinnin’s “Roethke Plain” is a telling portrait of Roethke showing up for a reading. Basically, it portrays an out-of-control con artist. Brinnin meant no harm, nor do I. Roethke is dead. He has strutted and fretted his hour upon the stage…now he is seen no more. Yet his tin ear, his atrocious effects, are alive in English classes in sundry places. Observing this, rueing it, I am like the little boy in the old tale, taking a gander at a naked emperor’s promenade. Admit it folks, you can see the unclothed flab flopping.
Here is the poem, for reference:
I Knew a Woman I knew a woman, lovely in her bones, When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them; Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one: The shapes a bright container can contain! Of her choice virtues only gods should speak, Or English poets who grew up on Greek (I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.) How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin, She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and stand; She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin: I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand; She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake, Coming behind her for her pretty sake (But what prodigious mowing did we make.) Love likes a gander, and adores a goose: Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize; She played it quick, she played it light and loose; My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees; Her several parts could keep a pure repose, Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose (She moved in circles, and those circles moved.) Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay: I'm martyr to a motion not my own; What's freedom for? To know eternity. I swear she cast a shadow white as stone. But who would count eternity in days? These old bones live to learn her wanton ways: (I measure time by how a body sways.)