Wednesday, August 31, 2022

The Poet: Theodore Roethke, "In a Dark Time"

"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."

- Theodore Roethke

No comments:

Post a Comment