Theodore Roethke: 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 to know? 
I hear my being dance from ear to ear. 
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you? 
God bless the Ground!   I shall walk softly there, 
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how? 
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair; 
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do 
To you and me; so take the lively air, 
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know. 
What falls away is always. And is near. 
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. 
I learn by going where I have to go.

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.