The Waking by Theodore Roethke
The Waking
by Theodore Roethke
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.
“I feel my fate in what I cannot fear, I learn by going where I need to go…” This, like Machado’s “you walker, you make the road by walking” is one of the gorgeous pathmaker poems to me. And the pattern of it, the villanelle, that he makes look so effortless, that makes this such a fun poem to read, is so elegant! It feels like a prayer to me, and particularly the prayer of one who has known struggle.
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) was the son of a German immigrant greenhouse-keeper in Saginaw, Michigan, and his poems consistently return to the root cellar, the greenhouse, the moss-rooted world of his childhood — a sensibility shaped by mud, growth, decay, and the small intelligent labors of plants. He suffered from severe bipolar illness throughout his adult life, was hospitalized multiple times, and died of a heart attack at fifty-five.
