I sang of a Rose ...

ROSE DOLORES COFFEY 1909 - 1934

Evelyn wrote of the little sister she so loved in a 1978 letter to my brother:

Rose was exceptionally beautiful - often she was stopped on the street to tell her so. She had much more common sense and true intelligence than I, and my greatest joy was to have her approve of me. She was so much more self-contained than I, and it took people longer to realize how wonderful she was.

I should also say that Rose had a beautiful singing voice. While at Cleveland College, we sang over the radio with the Glee Club, and her professor in accounting told Mama he had never had a more brilliant pupil.

When she died, the priest told all the young girls in the confessional about her, and her confessor told me Rose had been given her Heaven on a silver platter, but that I would have to work for mine.

The priest who gave the eulogy at her funeral (he was a cousin of St Therese of Lisieux) said we were "two bodies with one soul". He had known us all our lives.

After her death I was very unwell, and was told I would never run or dance again. It seems there was something wrong with my heart. When I came to Detroit, the doctors wouldn't give me "two cents" for my life. But Holy Communion has been my medicine, and I have lived here in Detroit a long and wonderful life.

Leaving Cleveland was a serious wrench because I was greatly loved and considered "special". At Cleveland College (Western Reserve University) the poets called me their little Emily Dickinson. At the time I didn't even know who she was; but Julia and Jack [Flynn] took me to Amherst and I have pressed flowers from her garden.

When Rose died our income was cut in two so I had to stop going to college. On the strength of a poem they had seen in the magazine "Skyline", the Ohio Poetry Society created their first scholarship for me. It was formally presented at a reception at the Statler Hotel - all silver and candles, and I was terrified of all the brilliant and distinguished people.

I read a poem called "The Rose " and a composer in the audience asked permission to set it to music. Eventually this same composer set a number of my things to music, and there are recordings of them around somewhere.

Rose died in 1934, breaking young Evelyn's heart forever. She expressed her love for this sister in an early poem,

The Rose Song.

The flower

is gone.

The dagger stem

in dark and dry distraught

clings aching to its earth,

watching

with a dark heart

her petals

skim heaven,

where sun is;

where dews fall;

where clouds float;

where birds wing.

High there

where only a prayer

can meet

again

the lovely rose,

she spills

her unspent sweet.

High there

where God is,

the flower is.

Evelyn Coffey

(This note accompanies one copy of this poem: This little poem is dedicated to my beautiful sister Rose, who died when she was 24. It has been recently set to music and was presented in concert at the Art Institute. In the poem, she is the flower; I the stem.)

Another poem, merely noted To my sister Rose, says

The winds

swept perfume to my lips

and I sang

of a rose.

April rains

flung their fragrance

upon my hair,

and the sunset

whirled its flagrant pool of pinks

into my eyes.

I know now

That they are all

God’s thoughts of you,

Spoken aloud.

Evelyn Coffey