Quote

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.

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
Turns
Wait
Fearful
Water
Creation
Lakes
Heart
Beyond
Flash
Subsides
Terrible
Pool
Sunlit
Silence
Forests
Abominable
Violence
Rings
Unafraid
Fire
Instant
Lake
Waiting
Burning
Forest

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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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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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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
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What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
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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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A mind too active is no mind at all.
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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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All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
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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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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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Who rise from flesh to spirit know the fall: The word outleaps the world, and light is all.
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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
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Being, not doing, is my first joy.
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Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.
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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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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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Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire
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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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Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
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The living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!
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