On 1st August 1963, that is 50 years ago tomorrow, the Michigan poet Theodore Roethke died of a heart attack whilst swimming. The former poet-in-residence at the University of Washington in Seattle was 55 years of age.
The following lines commence The Waking.-
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?
Such profound lines Gwilym and I feel they have a resonance for me at the moment after my recent attack - so I shall copy them out and keep looking at them, so that (hopefully) I can learn more and more from them.
ReplyDelete55? Swimming? Oo-er...
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you like them Pat, so do I. I think they'd go well on those little thought for the day cards one finds in brightly lit esoteric shops or in the gloom behind the church doorways.
ReplyDeleteDominic, you are made of other material!