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How terrible the need for God.

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
God
Terrible
Need
Needs

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I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.
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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
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Time marks us while we are marking time.
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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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The self says, I am The heart says, I am less The spirit says, you are Nothing.
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Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
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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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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 came to love, I came into my own.
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In the kingdom of bang and blab.
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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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When I go mad, I call my friends by phone: I am afraid they might think they're alone.
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How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
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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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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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Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
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Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
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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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We think by feeling. What is there to know?
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