Author: Theodore Roethke

In the long journey out of the self, There are many detours, washed-out interrupted raw places Where the shale slides […]

I am twenty-four Led to slaughter I survived. The following are empty synonyms: Man and beast Love and hate Friend […]

1 Against the stone breakwater, Only an ominous lapping, While the wind whines overhead, Coming down from the mountain, Whistling […]

I I dream of journeys repeatedly: Of flying like a bat deep into a narrowing tunnel Of driving alone, without […]

(My student, thrown by a horse) I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils; And her quick look, a […]

This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks, Cut stems struggling to put down feet, What saint strained so much, Rose […]

I saw a young snake glide Out of the mottled shade And hang, limp on a stone: A thin mouth, […]

The fruit rolled by all day. They prayed the cogs would creep; They thought about Saturday pay, And Sunday sleep. […]

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones, When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them; Ah, when […]

In Saginaw, in Saginaw, The wind blows up your feet, When the ladies’ guild puts on a feed, There’s beans […]

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils, Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight, All the […]

Suddenly the window will open And Mother will call It’s time to come in The wall will part I will […]

In moving-slow he has no Peer. You ask him something in his Ear, He thinks about it for a Year; […]

Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch, Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the […]

When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail, She looked so limp and bedraggled, So foolish and trusting, […]

The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was […]

Now as the train bears west, Its rhythm rocks the earth, And from my Pullman berth I stare into the […]

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn […]

All profits disappear: the gain Of ease, the hoarded, secret sum; And now grim digits of old pain Return to […]

In a dark time, the eye begins to see, I meet my shadow in the deepening shade; I hear my […]

I study the lives on a leaf: the little Sleepers, numb nudgers in cold dimensions, Beetles in caves, newts, stone-deaf […]

Indelicate is he who loathes The aspect of his fleshy clothes, The flying fabric stitched on bone, The vesture of […]