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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
Joy
Streams
Knew
River
Came
Rivers
Water
Stones
Ears
Sang
Rain
Veins
Summer
Waters
Early
Ran
More quotes by Theodore Roethke
A mind too active is no mind at all.
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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 learn by going where I have to go.
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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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Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
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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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Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire
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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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What falls away is always. And is near.
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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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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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How terrible the need for God.
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Long live the weeds that overwhelm My narrow vegetable realm! The bitter rock, the barren soil That force the son of man to toil All things unholy, marred by curse, The ugly of the universe.
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The living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!
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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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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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The stones were sharp, The wind came at my back Walking along the highway, Mincing like a cat.
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