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What falls away is always. And is near.

Theodore Roethke

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Theodore Roethke
Age: 55 †
Born: 1908
Born: May 25
Died: 1963
Died: August 1
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Saginaw
Michigan
Away
Always
Falls
Near
Fall

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So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, An intolerable waiting, A longing for another place and time, Another condition.
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The indignity of it!- With everything blooming above me, Lilies, pale-pink cyclamen, roses, Whole fields lovely and inviolate,- Me down in the fetor of weeds, Crawling on all fours, Alive, in a slippery grave.
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The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone.
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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
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I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road,As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swamplandDisturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance,By pulling off flesh from the living planetAs if I had committed, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration.
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The fields stretch out in long unbroken rows. We walk aware of what is far and close. Here distance is familiar as a friend. The feud we kept with space comes to an end.
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Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire
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I came where the river Ran over stones My ears knew An early joy. And all the waters Of all the streams Sang in my veins That summer day.
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A terrible violence of creation,A flash into the burning heart of the abominableYet if we wait, unafraid, beyond the fearful instant,The burning lake turns into a forest pool,The fire subsides into rings of water,A sunlit silence.
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In this place of light: he dares to live Who stops being a bird, yet beats his wings Against the immense immeasurable emptiness of things.
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I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.
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What have I done, dear God, to deserve this perpetual feeling that I'm almost ready to begin something really new?
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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
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All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
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In a dark time, the eye begins to see / I meet my shadow in the deepening shade...Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
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Fear was my father, Father Fear. His look drained the stones.
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Time marks us while we are marking time.
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But when I breath with the birds, The spirit of wrath becomes the spirit of blessings, And the dead begin from their dark to sing in my sleep.
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How terrible the need for God.
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By daily dying, I have come to be.
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