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Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire

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
Lost
Like
Wanders
Wander
Bones
Fire
Pain

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How terrible the need for God.
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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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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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I came to love, I came into my own.
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I have gone into the waste lonely places
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All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
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By daily dying, I have come to be.
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Being, not doing, is my first joy.
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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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A mind too active is no mind at all.
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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
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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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We think by feeling. What is there to know?
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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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What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
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How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
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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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When I go mad, I call my friends by phone: I am afraid they might think they're alone.
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