Theodore Roethke - Stones Quotes

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Is pain a promise? I was schooled in pain,
And found out what I could of all desire;
I weep for what I'm like when I'm alone
In the deep center of the voice and fire. I know the motion of the deepest stone.
Each one's himself, yet each one's everyone.

Theodore Roethke
Yet for this we travelled
With hope, and not alone,
In the country of ourselves,
In a country of bright stone.

Theodore Roethke
Fear was my father, Father Fear.
His look drained the stones.

Theodore Roethke
Beginnings start without shade,
Thinner than minnows.
The live grass whirls with the sun,
Feet run over the simple stones,
There's time enough.
Behold, in the lout's eye, love.

Theodore Roethke
Goodbye, goodbye, old stones, the time-order is going,
I have married my hands to perpetual agitation,
I run, I run to the whistle of money.

Theodore Roethke
In a dark wood I saw—
I saw my several selves
Come running from the leaves,
Lewd, tiny, careless lives
That scuttled under stones,
Or broke, but would not go.

Theodore Roethke
I lived with deep roots once:
Have I forgotten their ways —
The gradual embrace
Of lichen around stones?

Theodore Roethke
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.

Theodore Roethke
Thought does not crush to stone.
The great sledge drops in vain.
Truth never is undone;
Its shafts remain.

Theodore Roethke
The stones were sharp, The wind came at my back; Walking along the highway, Mincing like a cat.

Theodore Roethke
Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)

Theodore Roethke
I came where the river Ran over stones; My ears knew An early joy. And all the waters Of all the streams Sang in my veins That summer day.

Theodore Roethke
At Woodlawn I heard the dead cry;
I was lulled by the slamming of iron,
A slow drip over stones,
Toads brooding in wells.
All the leaves stuck out their tongues;
I shook the softening chalk of my bones,
Saying,
Snail, snail, glister me forward,
Bird, soft-sigh me home.
Worm, be with me.
This is my hard time.

Theodore Roethke
All finite things reveal infinitude: The mountain with its singular bright shade Like the blue shine on freshly frozen snow, The after-light upon ice-burdened pines; Odor of basswood upon a mountain slope, A scene beloved of bees; Silence of water above a sunken tree: The pure serene of memory of one man,- A ripple widening from a single stone Winding around the waters of the world.

Theodore Roethke