Theodore Roethke
THE FOLLIES OF ADAM
Read me Euripides,
Or some old lout who can
Remember what it was
To jump out of his skin.
Things speak to me: I swear;
But why am I groaning here,
Not even out of breath?
II
What are scepter and crown?
No more than what
is
raised
By a naked stem:
The rose leaps to this girl;
The earthly lives in her;
A thorn does well in the wind,
At ease with all that flows.
III
I talked to a shrunken root;
Ah, how she laughed to see
Me staring past my foot,
One toe in eternity;
But when the root replied,
She shivered in her skin,
And looked away.
IV
Father and son of this death,
The soul dies every night;
In the wide white, the known
Reaches of common day,
What eagle needs a tree?
