Quote

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.

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
Dark
Eye
Desire
Deepening
Light
Darker
Time
Shade
Begins
Shadow
Meet

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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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What falls away is always. And is near.
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Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
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Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire
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I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.
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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 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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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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The self says, I am The heart says, I am less The spirit says, you are Nothing.
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The living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!
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All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
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How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
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We think by feeling. What is there to know?
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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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Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
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I came to love, I came into my own.
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You must believe: a poem is a holy thing - a good poem, that is. The poem, even a short time after being written, seems no miracle unwritten, it seems something beyond the capacity of the gods.
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By daily dying, I have come to be.
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I have gone into the waste lonely places
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