Poem of the Month

Dolor

By Theodore Roethke

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paperweight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplication of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.

In contrast to the manic dance of My Papa’s Waltz (Voice May 2012) this piece finds the American poet Theodore Roethke (1908-63) in more sombre mood. Side by side the poems reflect the lurches between euphoria and depression to which the poet was prone. Dolor captures perfectly, albeit in pre-digital terms, the awful tedium of office life.