What's madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance? - Theodore Roethke

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.

I feel her presence in the common day,
In that slow dark that widens every eye.
She moves as water moves, and comes to me,
Stayed by what was, and pulled by what would be.

from “She

We breathe in unison.
The outside dies within,
And she knows all I am. — Theodore Roethke, section 1 of “Memory,” The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke (Doubleday, 1975)