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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.
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
Hands
Moved
Blossoms
Dream
Flower
Leaned
Stills
Toward
Cave
Still
Lived
Dove
Love
Hair
Sang
Called
Caves
Simple
Flowers
Sweetened
Death
Rain
Hollows
More quotes by Theodore Roethke
How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
Theodore Roethke
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.
Theodore Roethke
What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
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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.
Theodore Roethke
Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
Theodore Roethke
The self says, I am The heart says, I am less The spirit says, you are Nothing.
Theodore Roethke
I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
Theodore Roethke
What have I done, dear God, to deserve this perpetual feeling that I'm almost ready to begin something really new?
Theodore Roethke
The living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!
Theodore Roethke
I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
Theodore Roethke
So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, An intolerable waiting, A longing for another place and time, Another condition.
Theodore Roethke
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.
Theodore Roethke
I have gone into the waste lonely places
Theodore Roethke
What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
Theodore Roethke
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.
Theodore Roethke
In this place of light: he dares to live Who stops being a bird, yet beats his wings Against the immense immeasurable emptiness of things.
Theodore Roethke
Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
Theodore Roethke
All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
Theodore Roethke
And I walked, I walked through the light air I moved with the morning.
Theodore Roethke
Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
Theodore Roethke