Quote

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.

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
Beats
Bird
Immeasurable
Place
Dares
Light
Stops
Live
Immense
Things
Emptiness
Dare
Wings

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Time marks us while we are marking time.
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By daily dying, I have come to be.
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Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
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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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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 self says, I am The heart says, I am less The spirit says, you are Nothing.
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All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
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Fear was my father, Father Fear. His look drained the stones.
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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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How terrible the need for God.
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I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
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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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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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A mind too active is no mind at all.
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I came to love, I came into my own.
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How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
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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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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
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In the kingdom of bang and blab.
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What falls away is always. And is near.
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