from <strong>Open House</strong> My truths are all foreknown, This anguish self-revealed. I'm naked to the bone, With nakedness my shield. Myself is… - Theodore Roethke

My truths are all foreknown, This anguish self-revealed. I’m naked to the bone, With nakedness my shield.

It’s your privilege to find me incomprehensible. I gave you my minutes; let them remain ours. I hope I haunt you.

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.

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.