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Theodore Roethke

61 quotes

“My secrets cry aloud. I have no need for tongue. My heart keeps open house, My doors are widely swung. An epic of the eyes My love, with no disguise.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My truths are all foreknown, This anguish self-revealed. I’m naked to the bone, With nakedness my shield.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The light comes brighter from the east; the caw Of restive crows is sharper on the ear.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He loops in crazy figures half the night Among the trees that face the corner light. But when he brushes up against a screen, We are afraid of what our eyes have seen: For something is amiss or out of place When mice with wings can wear a human face.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks, Cut stems struggling to put down feet, What saint strained so much, Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life?”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road, As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swampland; Disturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance, By pulling off flesh from the living planet; As if I had committed, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Like witches they flew along rows, Keeping creation at ease; With a tendril for needle They sewed up the air with a stem; They teased out the seed that the cold kept asleep, — All the coils, loops and whorls. They trellised the sun; they plotted for more than themselves.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Over the gulfs of dream Flew a tremendous bird Further and further away Into a moonless black, Deep in the brain, far back.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I study the lives on a leaf: the little Sleepers, numb nudgers in cold dimensions.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At Woodlawn I Heard the dead cry: I was lulled by the slamming of iron, A slow drip over stones, Toads brooding wells.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I shook the softening chalk of my bones, Saying, Snail, snail, glister me forward, Bird, soft-sigh me home, Worm, be with me. This is my hard time.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Voice, come out of the silence. Say something. Appear in the form of a spider Or a moth beating the curtain. Tell me: Which is the way I take; Out of what door` do I go, Where and to whom? Dark hollows said, lee to the wind, The moon said, back of an eel, The salt said, look by the sea, Your tears are not enough praise, You will find no comfort here, In the kingdom of bang and blab.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Who stunned the dirt into noise? Ask the mole, he knows. I feel the slime of a wet nest. Beware Mother Mildew. Nibble again, fish nerves.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Goodbye, goodbye, old stones, the time-order is going, I have married my hands to perpetual agitation, I run, I run to the whistle of money.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The mind moved, not alone, Through the clear air, in the silence.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A lively understandable spirit Once entertained you. It will come again. Be still. Wait.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I saw the separateness of all things! My heart lifted up with the great grasses; The weeds believed me, and the nesting birds.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The wind sharpened itself on a rock; A voice sang:”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mother of quartz, your words writhe into my ear. Renew the light, lewd whisper.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The wasp waits. The edge cannot eat the center. The grape listens. The path tells little to the serpent. An eye comes out of the wave. The journey from flesh is longest. A rose sways least. The redeemer comes a dark way.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 called; The flowers leaned on themselves, the flowers in hollows; And love, love sang toward.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To stare into the after-light, the glitter left on the lake's surface, When the sun has fallen behind a wooded island; To follow the drips sliding from a lifted oar Held up, while the rower breathes, and the small boat drifts quietly shoreward; To know that light falls and fills, often without our knowing.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'll seek my own meekness. What grace I have is enough. The lost have their own pace. The stalks ask something else. What the grave says, The nest denies.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Bless me and the maze I'm in! Hello, thingy spirit.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beginnings start without shade, Thinner than minnows. The live grass whirls with the sun, Feet run over the simple stones, There's time enough. Behold, in the lout's eye, love.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I take this cadence from a man named Yeats: I take it and I give it back again: For other tunes and other wanton beats Have tossed my heart and fiddled through my brain. Yes, I was dancing mad, and how That came to be the bears and Yeats would know.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dante attained the purgatorial hill, Trembled at hidden virtue without flaw, Shook with a mighty power beyond his will, — Did Beatrice deny what Dante saw? All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how? The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair; I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Great Nature has another thing to do To you and me; so take the lively air, And, lovely, learn by going where to go.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This shaking keeps me steady. I should know. What falls away is always. And is near. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I learn by going where I have to go.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I knew a woman, lovely in her bones, When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them; Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one: The shapes a bright container can contain!”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay: I'm martyr to a motion not my own; What's freedom for? To know eternity. I swear she cast a shadow white as stone. But who would count eternity in days? These old bones live to learn her wanton ways: (I measure time by how a body sways.)”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is pain a promise? I was schooled in pain, And found out what I could of all desire; I weep for what I'm like when I'm alone In the deep center of the voice and fire.I know the motion of the deepest stone. Each one's himself, yet each one's everyone.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The night wind rises. Does my father live? Dark hangs upon the waters of the soul. My flesh is breathing slower than a wall. Love alters all. Unblood my instinct, love.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I lived with deep roots once: Have I forgotten their ways — The gradual embrace Of lichen around stones?”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The moon draws back its waters from the shore. By the lake's edge, I see a silver swan, And she is what I would. In this light air, Lost opposites bend down — Sing of that nothing of which all is made, Or listen into silence, like a god.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How can I rest in the days of my slowness? I've become a strange piece of flesh, Nervous and cold, bird-furtive, whiskery, With a cheek soft as a hound's ear. What's left is light as a seed; I need an old crone's knowing.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have gone into the waste lonely places Behind the eye.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Too much reality can be a dazzle, a surfeit; Too close immediacy an exhaustion”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A terrible violence of creation, A flash into the burning heart of the abominable; Yet 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 (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Being, not doing, is my first joy.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To whom does this terrace belong? — With its limestone crumbling into fine greyish dust, Its bevy of bees, and its wind-beaten rickety sun-chairs? Not to me, but this lizard, Older than I, or the cockroach.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire; What burns me now? Desire, desire, desire.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I bleed my bones, their marrow to bestow Upon that God who knows what I would know.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let others probe the mystery if they can. Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will — The right thing happens to the happy man.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source