Germinal - Uncollected Roethke

Here's an uncollected (pretty sure), maybe unpublished, Roethke poem.

Replete with the usual mix of seeds, pipes, moisture, sprouts, the color grey ... it also has undertones of Dolor. Root Cellar and Forcing House cover this territory better, but I like it a bit.

Germinal

Slowly, slowly, without cracking the thinnest varnish,
A building settles.
There are many changes without the drama, days without sunset,
Merging of mist and mist, boredom upon boredom;
Cities of fog and ambiguous pigeons;
Lacklustre eyes that see only grey like the lion.

Drop by drop the last grey day leaks through a rain pipe;
A potato sprout pokes through rotting burlap;
Cold seed, long buried in a crush of mud and sticks,
Begins to stir;
In the vein, in the long vine,
Time matures.