Theodore Roethke

“في أزمنة الظلام، تبدأ العينُ بالرؤية”

“The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.”

“Let others probe the mystery if they can. Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will- The right thing happens to the happy man. The bird flies out, the bird flies back again; The hill becomes the valley, and is still; Let others delve that mystery if they can. God bless the roots! -Body and soul are one The small become the great, the great the small; The right thing happens to the happy man. Child of the dark, he can out leap the sun, His being single, and that being all: The right thing happens to the happy man. Or he sits still, a solid figure when The self-destructive shake the common wall; Takes to himself what mystery he can, And, praising change as the slow night comes on, Wills what he would, surrendering his will Till mystery is no more: No more he can. The right thing happens to the happy man.”

“Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?”

“In a dark time, the eye begins to see.”

“I may look like a beer salesman, but I'm a poet.”

“May my silences become more accurate.”

“My father is a fish.”

“All lovers live by longing, and endure:Summon a vision and declare it pure.”

“Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire”

“My Papa's Waltz:The whiskey on your breathCould make a small boy dizzy;But I hung on like death:Such waltzing was not easy.We romped until the pansSlid from the kitchen shelf;My mother's countenanceCould not unfrown itself.The hand that held my wristWas battered on one knuckle;At every step you missedMy right ear scraped a buckle.You beat time on my headWith a palm caked hard by dirt,Then waltzed me off to bedStill clinging to your shirt.”

“I long for the imperishable quiet at the heartof form.”

“Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't.”

“Nothing would give up life:Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.”

“What's madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?”

“In a dark time, the eye begins to see,I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;I hear my echo in the echoing wood--A lord of nature weeping to a tree.I live between the heron and the wren,Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.What's madness but nobility of soulAt odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!I know the purity of pure despair,My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.That place among the rocks--is it a cave,Or winding path? The edge is what I have.A steady storm of correspondences! A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,And in broad day the midnight comes again!A man goes far to find out what he is--Death of the self in a long, tearless night,All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.The mind enters itself, and God the mind,And one is One, free in the tearing wind.”

“How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The stones were sharp,The wind came at my back;Walking along the highway, Mincing like a cat.”

“So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying,An intolerable waiting,A longing for another place and time,Another condition.”

“I have gone into the waste lonely places”

“DolorI have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,Desolation in immaculate public places,Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,Endless duplicaton of lives and objects.And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate gray standard faces.”

“(I measure time by how a body sways.)”

“In this place of light: he dares to liveWho stops being a bird, yet beats his wingsAgainst the immense immeasurable emptiness of things.”

“By daily dying, I have come to be.”

“What falls away is always. And is near.”

“What's madness but nobility of soulAt odds with circumstance? The day's on fire! I know the purity of pure despair, my shadow pinned against a sweating wall, that place among the rocks--is it a cave, or winding path? The edge is what I have.”

“What we need are more people who specialize in the impossible.”

“Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries.”

“The WakingI 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.We think by feeling. What is there to know?I hear my being dance from ear to ear.I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.Of those so close beside me, which are you?God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,And learn by going where I have to go.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.Great Nature has another thing to doTo you and me, so take the lively air,And, lovely, learn by going where to go.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.”

“A mind too active is no mind at all.”

“The darkness has it's own light.”

“Over every mountain, there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley.”

“Deep in their roots all flowers keep the light.”

“I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more. ”