An Old Song

All lovers live by longing, and endure:

Summon a vision and declare it pure.

       Theodore Roethke, “Four For Sir John Davies”

 

 

  

I awakened with a memory,

Something from a dream,

And it was like an old song

That for no reason you know

Starts playing in your mind

And you can’t get it to stop

And the more you hear it

The more persistent it is.

 

You remember the music

But not all the words

So you fill in the blanks

With words of your own

And the song is part true

And part what you make it . . .

 

And so she was, and still is.

 





Poetry by countryfog
Read 614 times
Written on 2013-08-20 at 18:44

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josephus The PoetBay support member heart!
Thank God for old songs and half forgotten dreams. I still look with joy to the future but the past and its memories mostly incomplete or in shadows by soft candle light in the cozy corners of my mind are treasures I sometimes find in quiet times as in a refuge
2013-08-22



I sometimes hear my own song. I sometimes write about it.

There is something inherently melancholy about Roethke's poems. Your poem is more wistful than melancholy I think, but the connection is there.
2013-08-21