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Kenneth Patchen

Kenneth Patchen Books

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Collected Poems

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We Meet

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Sleepers awake

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“I write the lips of the moon upon her shoulders. In a temple of silvery farawayness I guard her to rest. For her bed I write a stillness over all the swans of the world. With the morning breath of the snow leopard I cover her against any hurt. Using the pen of rivers and mountaintops I store her pillow with singing. Upon her hair I write the looking of the heavens at early morning. -- Away from this kingdom, from this last undefiled place, I would keep our governments, our civilization, and all other spirit-forsaken and corrupt institutions. O cold beautiful blossoms of the moon moving upon her shoulders . . . the lips of the moon moving there . . . where the touch of any other lips would be a profanation.”

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Book:Collected Poems
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“There Are Not Many Kingdoms Left I write the lips of the moon upon her shoulders. In a temple of silvery farawayness I guard her to rest. For her bed I write a stillness over all the swans of the world. With the morning breath of the snow leopard I cover her against any hurt. Using the pen of rivers and mountaintops I store her pillow with singing. Upon her hair I write the looking of the heavens at early morning. — Away from this kingdom, from this last undefiled place, I would keep our governments, our civilization, and all other spirit-forsaken and corrupt institutions. O cold beautiful blossoms of the moon moving upon her shoulders . . . the lips of the moon moving there . . . where the touch of any other lips would be a profanation.”

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Author:Kenneth Patchen
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“Man is not to direct or to be directed anymore than a tree or a cloud or a stone Man is not to rule or be ruled anymore than a faith or a truth or a love Man is not to doubt or to be doubted anymore than a wave or a seed or a fire There is no problem in living which life hasn't answered to its own need And we cannot direct, rule, or doubt what is beyond our highest ability to understand we can only be humble before it we can only worship ourselves because we are a part of it The eye in the leaf is watching out of our fingers The ear in the stone is listening through our voices The thought of the wave is thinking in our dreams The faith of the seed is building with our deaths”

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Book:Collected Poems
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“I think you will agree that I am alive in every part of this book; turn back twenty, thirty, one hundred pages - I am back there. That is why I hate the story; characters are not snakes that they must shed their skins on every page - there can only be one action: what a man is. When you have understood this, you will be through with novels.”

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Author:Kenneth Patchen
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“Why shouldn't you think it's crazy to believe in a green deer? All your life you have been taught to believe in only what you can use-to set on the table, to put in the bank, to build a house with. What possible use would a green deer be to anyone? Who would believe in a man with a blazing bush in his cart? Then let me tell you that it is beliefs just such as these that are the only hope of the world. Let me tell you that until men are ready to believe in the green deer and the strange carter, we shall not lift our noses above the bloody mess we have made of our living.”

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Author:Kenneth Patchen
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“It's dark out, Jack, the stations out there don't identify themselves, we're in it raw-blind like burned rats, it's running out all around us, the footprints of the beast, one nobody has any notion of. The white and vacant eyes of something above there, something that doesn't know we exist. I smell heartbreak up there, Jack, a heartbreak at the center of things, and in which we don't figure at all.”

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Book:We Meet
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“'THIS ROOM HAS MYSTERY LIKE A TRANCE' This room has mystery like a trance Of wine ; forget-me-nots of you Are chair and couch, the books your Fingers touched. And now that you Are absent here the silence scrapes A secret rust from everything; While sudden wreaths of sorrow's Dust uncover emptiness like halls To stumble through, and terror falls”

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Book:The Collected Poems of Kenneth Patchen
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