Theodore Roethke: 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 live between the heron and the wren, 
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire! 
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall. 
That place among the rocks—is it a cave, 
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon, 
And in broad day the midnight come again! 
A man goes far to find out what he is—
Death of the self in a long, tearless night, 
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire. 
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, 
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear. 
The mind enters itself, and God the mind, 
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.