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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.
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
Water
Stones
Ears
Sang
Rain
Veins
Summer
Waters
Early
Ran
Joy
Streams
Knew
River
Came
Rivers
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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
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What have I done, dear God, to deserve this perpetual feeling that I'm almost ready to begin something really new?
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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 wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.
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I have gone into the waste lonely places
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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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Time marks us while we are marking time.
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I came to love, I came into my own.
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Fear was my father, Father Fear. His look drained the stones.
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Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
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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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And I walked, I walked through the light air I moved with the morning.
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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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But when I breath with the birds, The spirit of wrath becomes the spirit of blessings, And the dead begin from their dark to sing in my sleep.
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Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire
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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
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The living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!
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In the kingdom of bang and blab.
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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
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What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
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