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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
Near
Fall
Away
Always
Falls

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How terrible the need for God.
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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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I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.
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The self says, I am The heart says, I am less The spirit says, you are Nothing.
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Long live the weeds that overwhelm My narrow vegetable realm! The bitter rock, the barren soil That force the son of man to toil All things unholy, marred by curse, The ugly of the universe.
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And soon a branch, part of a hidden scene,The leafy mind, that long was tightly furled,Will turn its private substance into green,And young shoots spread upon our inner world.
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Death was not. I lived in a simple drowse:Hands and hair moved through a dream of wakening blossoms.Rain sweetened the cave and the dove still calledThe flowers leaned on themselves, the flowers in hollowsAnd love, love sang toward.
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Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
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I learn by going where I have to go.
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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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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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Being, not doing, is my first joy.
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When I go mad, I call my friends by phone: I am afraid they might think they're alone.
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You must believe: a poem is a holy thing - a good poem, that is. The poem, even a short time after being written, seems no miracle unwritten, it seems something beyond the capacity of the gods.
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What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
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A too explicit elucidation in education destroys much of the pleasure of learning. There should be room for sly hinters, masters of suggestion.
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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
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