Quote

So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, An intolerable waiting, A longing for another place and time, Another condition.

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
Much
Longing
Time
Condition
Defined
Dying
Conditions
Waiting
Intolerable
Another
Adolescence
Place
Ill

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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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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
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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 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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Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
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I have gone into the waste lonely places
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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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Time marks us while we are marking time.
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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
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Fear was my father, Father Fear. His look drained the stones.
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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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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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I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
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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 living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!
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Let others probe the mystery if they can.Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will -The right thing happens to the happy man.
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What falls away is always. And is near.
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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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