Theodore Roethke And Photoverio

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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

That steady storm of correspondence

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Footnotes
The first photograph is the copyrighted property of LCSoL.

Highly recommended readings of Mr. Roethke's poems can be found  here. ________________________________________________________________________________________________