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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
Falls
Near
Fall
Away
Always

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How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
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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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Time marks us while we are marking time.
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Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire
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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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Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.
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Who rise from flesh to spirit know the fall: The word outleaps the world, and light is all.
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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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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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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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And I walked, I walked through the light air I moved with the morning.
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Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
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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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How terrible the need for God.
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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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What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
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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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The stones were sharp, The wind came at my back Walking along the highway, Mincing like a cat.
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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
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All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
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