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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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Being, not doing, is my first joy.
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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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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
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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 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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How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
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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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I learn by going where I have to go.
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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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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
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By daily dying, I have come to be.
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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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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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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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What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
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I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
Theodore Roethke
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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
Theodore Roethke
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The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone.
Theodore Roethke