Theodore Roethke Poems (31 Poems)
Infirmity (Theodore Roethke Poems)
In purest song one plays the constant foolAs changes shimmer in the inner eye.I stare and stare into a deepening poolAnd tell myself my image cannot die.I love myself: that’s my one constancy.Oh, to be something else, yet still to … Continue reading
Big Wind (Theodore Roethke Poems)
Where were the greenhouses going,Lunging into the lashingWind driving waterSo far down the riverAll the faucets stopped?-So we drained the manure-machineFor the steam plant,Pumping the stale mixtureInto the rusty boilers,Watching the pressure gaugeWaver over to red,As the seams hissedAnd the … Continue reading
She (Theodore Roethke Poems)
I think the dead are tender. Shall we kiss? –My lady laughs, delighting in what is.If she but sighs, a bird puts out its tongue.She makes space lonely with a lovely song.She lilts a low soft language, and I hearDown … Continue reading
Open House (Theodore Roethke Poems)
My secrets cry aloud.I have no need for tongue.My heart keeps open house,My doors are widely swung.An epic of the eyesMy love, with no disguise. My truths are all foreknown,This anguish self-revealed.I’m naked to the bone,With nakedness my shield.Myself is … Continue reading
The Bat (Theodore Roethke Poems)
By day the bat is cousin to the mouse.He likes the attic of an aging house. His fingers make a hat about his head.His pulse beat is so slow we think him dead. He loops in crazy figures half the … Continue reading
Cuttings (later) (Theodore Roethke Poems)
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 and sobbing,In my veins, in my bones I feel it … Continue reading
Once More, the Round (Theodore Roethke Poems)
What’s greater, Pebble or Pond?What can be known? The Unknown.My true self runs toward a HillMore! O More! visible. Now I adore my lifeWith the Bird, the abiding Leaf,With the Fish, the questing Snail,And the Eye altering All;And I dance … Continue reading
Child on Top of a Greenhouse (Theodore Roethke Poems)
The wind billowing out the seat of my britches,My feet crackling splinters of glass and dried putty,The half-grown chrysanthemums staring up like accusers,Up through the streaked glass, flashing with sunlight,A few white clouds all rushing eastward,A line of elms plunging … Continue reading
Selections from “I Am! Said the Lamb” (Theodore Roethke Poems)
I had a Donkey, that was all right,But he always wanted to fly my Kite;Every time I let him, the String would bust.Your Donkey is better behaved, I trust. (Theodore Roethke)
My Papa’s Waltz (Theodore Roethke Poems)
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 countenance Could not unfrown itself. The … Continue reading
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