Theodore Roethke

Journey Into The Interior

In the long journey out of the self, There are many detours, washed-out interrupted raw places Where the shale slides dangerously And the back wheels hang almost over the edge At the sudden veering,

The Survivor

I am twenty-four Led to slaughter I survived. The following are empty synonyms: Man and beast Love and hate Friend and foe Darkness and light. The way of killing men and beasts is the

1 Against the stone breakwater, Only an ominous lapping, While the wind whines overhead, Coming down from the mountain, Whistling between the arbors, the winding terraces; A thin whine of wires, a rattling and

The Far Field

I I dream of journeys repeatedly: Of flying like a bat deep into a narrowing tunnel Of driving alone, without luggage, out a long peninsula, The road lined with snow-laden second growth, A fine

Elegy For Jane

(My student, thrown by a horse) I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils; And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile; And how, once startled into talk, the light syllables leaped for

Cuttings

This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks, Cut stems struggling to put down feet, What saint strained so much, Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life? I can hear, underground, that sucking

Snake

I saw a young snake glide Out of the mottled shade And hang, limp on a stone: A thin mouth, and a tongue Stayed, in the still air. It turned; it drew away; Its

Pickle Belt

The fruit rolled by all day. They prayed the cogs would creep; They thought about Saturday pay, And Sunday sleep. Whatever he smelled was good: The fruit and flesh smells mixed. There beside him

I Knew A Woman

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones, When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them; Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one: The shapes a bright container can

The Saginaw Song

In Saginaw, in Saginaw, The wind blows up your feet, When the ladies’ guild puts on a feed, There’s beans on every plate, And if you eat more than you should, Destruction is complete.

Dolor

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils, Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight, All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage, Desolation in immaculate public places, Lonely reception room,

The Return

Suddenly the window will open And Mother will call It’s time to come in The wall will part I will enter heaven in muddy shoes I will come to the table And answer questions

The Sloth

In moving-slow he has no Peer. You ask him something in his Ear, He thinks about it for a Year; And, then, before he says a Word There, upside down (unlike a Bird), He

Root Cellar

Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch, Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark, Shoots dangled and drooped, Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates, Hung down long yellow

The Geranium

When 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

My Papa's Waltz

The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother’s

Night Journey

Now as the train bears west, Its rhythm rocks the earth, And from my Pullman berth I stare into the night While others take their rest. Bridges of iron lace, A suddenness of trees,

The Waking

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. We think by feeling. What is there

The Reckoning

All profits disappear: the gain Of ease, the hoarded, secret sum; And now grim digits of old pain Return to litter up our home. We hunt the cause of ruin, add, Subtract, and put

In A Dark Time

In a dark time, the eye begins to see, I meet my shadow in the deepening shade; I hear my echo in the echoing wood A lord of nature weeping to a tree, I

The Minimal

I study the lives on a leaf: the little Sleepers, numb nudgers in cold dimensions, Beetles in caves, newts, stone-deaf fishes, Lice tethered to long limp subterranean weeds, Squirmers in bogs, And bacterial creepers

Epidermal Macabre

Indelicate is he who loathes The aspect of his fleshy clothes, The flying fabric stitched on bone, The vesture of the skeleton, The garment neither fur nor hair, The cloak of evil and despair,