"Long Live The Weeds"
I love this all but forgotten early Roethke manifesto: “These shape the creature that is I.” Words to live by:
Theodore Roethke “Long Live The Weeds” --Hopkins Long live the weeds that overwhelm My narrow vegetable realm! – The bitter rock, the barren soil That force the son of man to toil; All things unholy, marked by curse, The ugly of the universe. The rough, the wicked and the wild That keep the spirit undefiled. With these I match my little wit And earn the right to stand or sit, Hope, look, create, or drink and die: These shape the creature that is I. |
Is this the "Hopkins" to which he refers? I must confess that this was the poem I expected to see when I clicked your post...
This darksome burn, horseback brown, His rollrock highroad roaring down, In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam Flutes and low to the lake falls home. A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth Turns and twindles over the broth Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning, It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning. Degged with dew, dappled with dew Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through, Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern, And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn. What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. |
Indeed it is, Mademoiselle Drysdale. Where have you been lately? Thanks for posting the Hopkins.
Oh goodness, Hopkins and his "groins": a gay priest whose middle name was "Manly," he couldn't have written any other way. |
I'm currently waiting for Roethke's Collected by mail. It's nice to have a preview.
Also, the Hopkins is quite beautiful. Cheers, John |
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