{"id":7,"date":"2005-04-02T00:25:03","date_gmt":"2005-04-02T04:25:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/omarsultanhaque\/2005\/04\/02\/dazzling-poems-by-theodore-ro"},"modified":"2005-04-02T00:25:03","modified_gmt":"2005-04-02T04:25:03","slug":"dazzling-poems-by-theodore-roethke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/omarsultanhaque\/2005\/04\/02\/dazzling-poems-by-theodore-roethke\/","title":{"rendered":"Dazzling Poems by Theodore Roethke"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

In a Dark Time<\/DIV>
\n


\n

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.

\n

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.

\n

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.

\n

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<\/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.
————-<\/P>
\n

The Reckoning<\/DIV>
\n


\n

All profits disappear: the gain
Of ease, the hoarded, secret sum;
And now grim digits of old pain
Return to litter up our home.

\n

We hunt the cause of ruin, add,
Subtract, and put ourselves in pawn;
For all our scratching on the pad,
We cannot trace the error down.

\n

What we are seeking is a fare
One way, a chance to be secure:
The lack that keeps us what we are,
The penny that usurps the poor.
<\/P><\/DIV><\/DIV><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 soulAt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1166,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[221],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/omarsultanhaque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/omarsultanhaque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/omarsultanhaque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/omarsultanhaque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/omarsultanhaque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/omarsultanhaque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/omarsultanhaque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/omarsultanhaque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/omarsultanhaque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}