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

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Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.
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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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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 learn by going where I have to go.
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In a dark time, the eye begins to see / I meet my shadow in the deepening shade...Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
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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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The self says, I am The heart says, I am less The spirit says, you are Nothing.
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I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
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We think by feeling. What is there to know?
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Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
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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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Fear was my father, Father Fear. His look drained the stones.
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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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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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Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
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By daily dying, I have come to be.
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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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Being, not doing, is my first joy.
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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
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