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, 1953.
While I'm on a roll today I thought I would share one of my favourite poems.
It's a villanelle, btw, meaning "it consists of five tercets [3-line stanzas] and a quatrain [4-line stanza], all on two rhymes, and with systematic later repetitions of lines 1 and 3 of the first tercet".
Another lovely villanelle can be found here.
J
4 comments:
Ooh. Lovely. I enjoy villanelles, and also Dylan Thomas. They always sound portentous, and because you know that what goes round comes round, they also convey a sense of the inevitable and inescapable.
hmm it just seems very warm and beautiful to me strangely enough. hahaha
It might sound strange, but it is one of my favourites primarily because I don't fully understand it. The sense of an elusive meaning keeps a text more interesting than a fully explicated & naked text. The importance of ambiguity?
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