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I have gone into the waste lonely places

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
Gone
Lonely
Waste
Places

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And I walked, I walked through the light air I moved with the morning.
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The living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!
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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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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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I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.
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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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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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Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.
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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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Fear was my father, Father Fear. His look drained the stones.
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How terrible the need for God.
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Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire
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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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In the kingdom of bang and blab.
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Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
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What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
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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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I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
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