Quote

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
Still
Lived
Dove
Love
Hair
Sang
Called
Caves
Simple
Flowers
Sweetened
Death
Rain
Hollows
Hands
Moved
Blossoms
Dream
Flower
Leaned
Stills
Toward
Cave

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

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The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone.
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How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
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Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire
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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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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.
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I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
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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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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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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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Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
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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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By daily dying, I have come to be.
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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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Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.
Theodore Roethke
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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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Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
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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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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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Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
Theodore Roethke