The waking

Christian Century, May 17, 2003 by Theodore Roethke

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?
   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.

"The Waking" [c] 1953 from The Complete Collected Poetry of Theodore Roethke. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.

THE AMERICAN POET Theodore Roethke (1908-63) was a naturalist, not a Christian, but this is one of the most beautiful poems I know, and it plunges the reader into the mystery of existence. It suggests that ordinary waking life may be a kind of sleep, prelude to some other reality, or it may be simply the little time we have before death. It's not clear whether the poet thinks that we actually learn from experience or that submitting to necessity is the only kind of knowing there is. We move about like sleepwalkers. Yet this journey through sleeping and waking evokes affirmation, delight and reverence, and it presages some kind of transformation.

--David Heim, executive editor