Selected works of Theodore Roethke

My secrets cry aloud.

I have no need for tongue.

My heart keeps open house,

My doors are widely swung.

An epic of the eyes

My love, with no disguise.
"Open House," ll. 1-6

The wind sharpened itself on a rock;

A voice sang:
Pleasure on ground
Has no sound,
Easily maddens
The uneasy man.
"The Shape of the Fire," ll. 40 - 45

Mother of quartz, your words writhe into my ear.

Renew the light, lewd whisper.
"The Shape of the Fire," ll. 54 - 55

The wasp waits.

The edge cannot eat the center.

The grape listens.

The path tells little to the serpent.

An eye comes out of the wave.

The journey from flesh is longest.

A rose sways least.

The redeemer comes a dark way.
"The Shape of the Fire," ll. 56-63

Death was not. I lived in a simple drowse:

Hands and hair moved through a dream of wakening blossoms.

Rain sweetened the cave and the dove still called;

The flowers leaned on themselves, the flowers in hollows;

And love, love sang toward.
"The Shape of the Fire," ll. 73-77

To stare into the after-light,

the glitter left on the lake's surface,

When the sun has fallen behind a wooded island;

To follow the drips sliding from a lifted oar

Held up, while the rower breathes, and the small boat drifts quietly shoreward;

To know that light falls and fills, often without our knowing.
The Shape of the Fire," ll. 88-92

I'll seek my own meekness.

What grace I have is enough.

The lost have their own pace.

The stalks ask something else.

What the grave says,

The nest denies.
"Unfold! Unfold!," ll. 59-64

Bless me and the maze I'm in!

Hello, thingy spirit.
"I Cry, Love! Love!," ll. 20-21

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.
"I Cry, Love! Love!," ll. 33-39

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.
"The Sententious Man," ll. 31-36

The night wind rises.

Does my father live?

Dark hangs upon the waters of the soul.

My flesh is breathing slower than a wall.

Love alters all. Unblood my instinct, love.
"The Renewal," ll. 7-10

The moon draws back its waters from the shore.

By the lake's edge, I see a silver swan,

And she is what I would.

In this light air,Lost opposites bend down —

Sing of that nothing of which all is made,

Or listen into silence, like a god.
"The Swan," ll. 15-20

Too much reality can be a dazzle, a surfeit;

Too close immediacy an exhaustion
"The Abyss"

A terrible violence of creation,

A flash into the burning heart of the abominable;

Yet if we wait, unafraid, beyond the fearful instant,

The burning lake turns into a forest pool,

The fire subsides into rings of water,A sunlit silence.
"The Abyss"

Being, not doing, is my first joy.
"The Abyss"

Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire;

What burns me now? Desire, desire, desire.
I bleed my bones, their marrow to bestow

Upon that God who knows what I would know.
"The Marrow"

Let others probe the mystery if they can.

Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will —

The right thing happens to the happy man.
"The Right Thing," ll. 1-3

God bless the roots! —

Body and soul are one!

The small become the great, the great the small;

The right thing happens to the happy man.
"The Right Thing," ll. 7-9

And I dance with William Blake

For love, for Love's sake;
And everything comes to One,

As we dance on, dance on, dance on.
Once More, the Round," ll. 11-12

Yet for this we travelled

With hope, and not alone,

In the country of ourselves,

In a country of bright stone.
"The Harsh Country," ll. 13-16

"A lively understandable spirit

Once entertained you.

It will come again.

Be still.

Wait."

"Love begets love.

This torment is my joy."