Author: Theodore Roethke

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 […]