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All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.

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
Endure
Lovers
Pure
Vision
Live
Summon
Declare
Longing

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Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
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Being, not doing, is my first joy.
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Fear was my father, Father Fear. His look drained the stones.
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How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
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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 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 stones were sharp, The wind came at my back Walking along the highway, Mincing like a cat.
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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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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
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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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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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By daily dying, I have come to be.
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A mind too active is no mind at all.
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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
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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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The living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!
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Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
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We think by feeling. What is there to know?
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