“And I
in terror
but not in doubt of
what I must do
in anguish, in haste,
wrenched from the earth root after root,
the soil heaving and cracking, the moss tearing asunder —”
A Tree Telling of Orpheus (1968)
Context: And I
in terror
but not in doubt of
what I must do
in anguish, in haste,
wrenched from the earth root after root,
the soil heaving and cracking, the moss tearing asunder —
and behind me the others: my brothers
forgotten since dawn. In the forest
they too had heard,
and were pulling their roots in pain
out of a thousand years' layers of dead leaves,
rolling the rocks away,
breaking themselves
out of
their depths.
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Denise Levertov 49
Poet 1923–1997Related quotes

“Our roots are in the depths of the woods-on the banks of streams and among the mosses.”
Motto on Galle's studio doors (Musée de l'École de Nancy).

Fooling, Drowning, Hallelujahing, p. 174
Brother Ray : Ray Charles' Own Story (1978)

“What we are after is the ROOT and not the branches.”
Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 11
Context: What we are after is the ROOT and not the branches. The root is the real knowledge; the branches are surface knowledge. Real knowledge breeds "body feel" and personal expression; surface knowledge breeds mechanical conditioning and imposing limitation and squelches creativity.

Wassily Kandinsky to Will Grohmann, 4 Dec. 1933; as quoted in 'Klee & Kandinsky', 2015 exhibition text, Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau Munich, 2015-2016 https://www.zpk.org/en/exhibitions/review_0/2015/klee-kandinsky-969.html
1930 - 1944

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 287.

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity