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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
Wanders
Wander
Bones
Fire
Pain
Lost
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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
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I have gone into the waste lonely places
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What falls away is always. And is near.
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So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, An intolerable waiting, A longing for another place and time, Another condition.
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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
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I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.
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By daily dying, I have come to be.
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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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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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