The Speaker - “Against Disaster”
The speaker is enduring an inconvenience for he/she affirms, “Now I am out of element/And far from anything my own,/My sources drained of all content,/The pieces of my spirit strewn.” The speaker is crushed psychologically to the magnitude that he/she feels that all the emotional and corporeal foundations that make him/ her have been dispersed.
The Speaker - “The Auction”
The speaker’s witness the auctioning of his/her properties in “The Auction.” The speaker recalls, “ Once on returning home, purse-proud and hale,/I found my choice possessions on the lawn./An auctioneer was whipping up a sale./I did not move to claim want was my own.” The speaker mislaid jurisdiction over his property once they were placed under auction. The possessions must have been valuable to warrant the retrieval of the amounts owed party that hired the auctioneers.
The Victims - “The Gossips”
Theodore Roethke affirms, “The victim walks, his curdled spine aware.” The victims of gossip are victimized by the gossipers. The victims’ cognizance, concerning the gossip, displays in their suggestive walking.
The Speaker - “In a Dark Time”
The speaker contemplates on the repercussions of dark time. The speaker asserts, “I live between the heron and the wren,/Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.” The ‘dark time’ subjects the speaker to the jeopardies that the ‘beasts and the serpents’ embody.
The Woman - “I Knew a Woman”
Theodore Roethke recalls, “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.” Roethke was mesmerized by the woman’s stances and prettiness. The woman was exquisite and her pleasurable reminiscences still linger.
