"The Waking" is a poem written by Theodore Roethke in 1953 in the form of a villanelle. It comments on the unknowable with a contemplative tone. It also has been interpreted as comparing life to waking and death to sleeping.

In popular culture

*The poem appears as an object in Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five.
*An excerpt of the poem also appears at the

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