Theodore Roethke Quotes

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.

Bless me and the maze I'm in!
Hello, thingy spirit.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mother of quartz, your words writhe into my ear. Renew the light, lewd whisper.

The wind sharpened itself on a rock; A voice sang:

I saw the separateness of all things!
My heart lifted up with the great grasses;
The weeds believed me, and the nesting birds.

The mind moved, not alone, Through the clear air, in the silence.

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.

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.

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.

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.

At Woodlawn I Heard the dead cry: I was lulled by the slamming of iron, A slow drip over stones, Toads brooding wells.