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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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When I go mad, I call my friends by phone: I am afraid they might think they're alone.
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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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We think by feeling. What is there to know?
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I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
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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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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
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Fear was my father, Father Fear. His look drained the stones.
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What falls away is always. And is near.
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Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.
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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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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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The stones were sharp, The wind came at my back Walking along the highway, Mincing like a cat.
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What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
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And I walked, I walked through the light air I moved with the morning.
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Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
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I learn by going where I have to go.
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By daily dying, I have come to be.
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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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Being, not doing, is my first joy.
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