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1/5/20, 10(22 PMMy Papaʼs Waltz by Theodore Roethke | Poetry Foundation

Page 1 of 2https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43330/my-papas-waltz

My Papa’s Waltz B Y T H E O D O R E R O E T H K E

Theodore Roethke, "My Papa's Waltz" from Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke. Copyright 1942 by Heast Magazines, Inc. Used by permission of Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke (1961)

The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother’s countenance Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt.

1/5/20, 10(22 PMMy Papaʼs Waltz by Theodore Roethke | Poetry Foundation

Page 2 of 2https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43330/my-papas-waltz

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