Art Is Our Defense Against Hysteria And

I Have Come To A Still, But Not A Deep Center, A Point Outside The Glittering Current; My Eyes Stare At The Bottom Of A River, At The Irregular Stones, Iridescent Sandgrains, My Mind Moves In More Than One Place, In A Country Half-land, Half-water. I Am Renewed By Death, Thought Of My Death, The Dry Scent Of A Dying Garden In September, The Wind Fanning The Ash Of A Low Fire. What I Love Is Near At Hand, Always, In Earth And Air.

May My Silences Become More Accurate.

I Am Overwhelmed By The Beautiful Disorder Of Poetry, The Eternal Virginity Of Words.

Wake The Happy Words.

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........ ....... Dark,dark My Light, And Darker My Desire. My Soul, Like Some Heat-maddened Summer Fly, Keeps Buzzing At The Sill. ~from "the Waking" By Theodore Roethke