Collected Poems Quotes

“We must not be frightened nor cajoled
into accepting evil as deliverance from evil.
We must go on struggling to be human,
though monsters of abstraction
police and threaten us.

Reclaim now, now renew the vision of
a human world where godliness
is possible and man
is neither gook nigger honkey wop nor kike

but man

permitted to be man.”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“I will no longer ask for more
than you have freely given or can give.”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“The trees themselves, as in winters past, will survive their burdening, broken thrive.”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“Monet’s “Waterlilies” (for Bill and Sonja) Today as the news from Selma and Saigon poisons the air like fallout, I come again to see the serene great picture that I love. Here space and time exist in light the eye like the eye of faith believes. The seen, the known dissolve in iridescence, become illusive flesh of light that was not, was, forever is. O light beheld as through refracting tears. Here is the aura of that world each of us has lost. Here is the shadow of its joy.”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“Unable to sleep, or pray, I stand
by the window looking out
at moonstruck trees a December storm
has bowed with ice.

Maple and mountain ash bend
under its glassy weight,
their cracked branches falling upon
the frozen snow.

The trees themselves, as in winters past,
will survive their burdening,
broken thrive. And am I less to You,
my God, than they?”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“The trees themselves, as in winters past, will survive their burdening, broken thrive. And am I less to You, my God, than they?”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“Oh, what a world we make,
oppressor and oppressed.

Our world--
this violent ghetto, slum
of the spirit raging against itself.

We hate kill destroy
in the name of human good
our killing and our hate destroy.”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“Know that love has chosen you
to live his crucial purposes.”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“It was as though you struggled against
fierce current jagged with debris
to save me then. I am desperate still.”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“confess i am curiously drawn unmentionable to
the americans doubt i could exist among them for
long however psychic demands far too severe
much violence much that repels i am attracted
none the less their variousness their ingenuity
their elan vital and that some thing essence
quiddity i cannot penetrate or name”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“all art is pain
suffered and outlived”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“something they call the american dream sure
we still believe in it i guess an earth man
in the tavern said irregardless of the some
times night mare facts we always try to double
talk our way around and its okay the dreams
okay and means whats good could be a damn sight
better means every body in the good old u s a
should have the chance to get ahead or at least
should have three squares a day as for myself
i do okay”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“Fury of truth: fury
of righteousness
become
angelic evil
demonic good?”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“their vaunted
liberty no body pushes me around i have heard
them say land of the free they sing what do
they fear mistrust betray more than the freedom
they boast of in their ignorant pride have seen
the squalid ghettoes in their violent cities
paradox on paradox how have the americans
managed to survive”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“america as much a problem in metaphysics as
it is a nation earthly entity an iota in our
galaxy an organism that changes even as i
examine it fact and fantasy never twice the
same so many variables”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“Sleepless, I stare from the dark hospital room at shadows of a flower and its leaves the nightlight fixes like a blotto on the corridor wall.”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“Ay! you creatures who have walked on seas of money all your foreign lives! Por caridad.”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“here among them the americans this baffling
multi people extremes and variegations their
noise restlessness their almost frightening
energy how best describe these aliens in my
reports to The Counselors

disguise myself in order to study them unobserved
adapting their varied pigmentations white black
red brown yellow the imprecise and strangering
distinctions by which they live by which they
justify their cruelties to one another

charming savages enlightened primitives brash
new comers lately sprung up in our galaxy how
describe them do they indeed know what or who
they are do not seem to yet no other beings
in the universe make more extravagant claims
for their importance and identity”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“World I have loved
and loving hated,
is it your sickness
luxuriating
in my body's world?”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“How shall the mind keep warm
save at spectral
fires--how thrive but by the light
of paradox?”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“Ars Longa Which is crueller
Vita Brevis life or art?”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“Know that love has chosen you
to live his crucial purposes.
Know that love has chosen you.

And will not pamper you nor spare;
demands obedience to all
the rigorous laws of risk,
does not pamper, will not spare.

Oh, master now love's instruments—
complex and not for the fearful,
simple and not for the foolish.
Master now love's instruments.

I who love you tell you this,
even as the pitiful killer waits for me,
I who love you tell you this.”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“In time,
you will come to regard my questioning
with a certain pained

amusement; in time, get so
you would hardly find
it possible to live without
my joke and me.”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“Fed the fires that consume us now, the fire that will save.”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“Traveling through Fog Looking back, we cannot see, except for its blurring lights like underwater stars and moons, our starting-place. Behind us, beyond us now is phantom territory, a world abstract as memories of earth the traveling dead take home. Between obscuring cloud and cloud, the cloudy dark ensphering us seems all we can be certain of. Is Plato’s cave.”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“We fight our wish to die.”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems