Quotes by Theodore Roethke

“What is madness but nobility of soul. At odds with circumstance?”

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

“I learn by going where I have to go”

“Love is not love until loves vulnerable”

“Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We havent time, and to see takes time - like to have a friend takes time.”

“I would rather live and love where death is king than have eternal life where love is not.”

Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries.

In a dark time, the eye begins to see.

By daily dying, I have come to be.

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.

Whats madness but nobility of soulAt odds with circumstance? The days 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............... Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire.My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,Keeps buzzing at the sill.~From The Waking by Theodore Roethke

My Papas 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 mothers 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.

What is madness but nobility of the soul at odds with circumstance.

Whats freedom for? To know eternity.

I learned not to fear infinity,The far field, the windy cliffs of forever,The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow,The wheel turning away from itself,The sprawl of the wave,The on-coming water.

The MistakeHe left his pants upon a chair:She was a widow, so she said:But he was apprehended, bare,By one who rose up from the dead.

I trust all joy

The GeraniumWhen I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,She looked so limp and bedraggled,So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,Or a wizened aster in late September,I brought her back in againFor a new routine -Vitamins, water, and whateverSustenance seemed sensibleAt the time: shed livedSo long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer,Her shriveled petals fallingOn the faded carpet, the staleSteak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.)The things she endured!-The dumb dames shrieking half the nightOr the two of us, alone, both seedy,Me breathing booze at her,She leaning out of her pot toward the window.Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me-And that was scary-So when that snuffling cretin of a maidThrew her, pot and all, into the trash-can,I said nothing.But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week,I was that lonely.

I learn by going where I have to go

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?