Kenneth Patchen QUOTES

1 " I tell you that what has changed is the whole conception of human life- that men of every race on this earth may have the same opportunity to live beautifully- to live in purity without fear or hunger or hatred- as brothers, not as brutes tearing through these hideous swamps of ignorance and war. Men speak of a belief in God. I am beginning to understand what every Christ- and their skins have been every color- what every Christ has taught: That love of God is love of mankind. That no one can profess to love God while he hates the least of his fellows. Jesus, if He were on earth right now, would fight to free men from oppression and evil and war; and you who have made a pious mockery of his every commandment- you would kill Him. "

― Kenneth Patchen

2 " Destiny is the music of the improbable. Were it otherwise, almost anyone could exist. "

― Kenneth Patchen , Poemscapes

3 " If the truth is inside,
And the form is outside,
What is the truth of sleep? "

― Kenneth Patchen , Collected Poems

4 " Law & order embrace on hate's border. "

― Kenneth Patchen , Collected Poems

5 " Take taking from those that give & nobody anywhere will need any more such gifts. "

― Kenneth Patchen , Collected Poems

6 " Out of slavery, freedom --yes, & roses from the pig's behind. "

― Kenneth Patchen , Collected Poems

7 " 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 "

― Kenneth Patchen , Collected Poems

8 " Come now, my child, if we were planning to harm you, do you think we'd be lurking here beside the path in the very darkest part of the forest? "

― Kenneth Patchen

9 " The one who comes to question himself cares for mankind. "

― Kenneth Patchen

10 " There are so many little dyings
How do we know which one of them
is death?

"

― Kenneth Patchen

11 " All at Once Is What Eternity Is. "

― Kenneth Patchen , Wonderings

12 " Art is not to throw light but to be light... "

― Kenneth Patchen

13 " There are so many little dyings that it doesn't matter which of them is death. "

― Kenneth Patchen

14 " God must have loved the people in power, for he made them so much like their own image of him. "

― Kenneth Patchen

15 " The Reason for Skylarks

It was nearly morning when the giant
Reached the tree of children.
Their faces shone like white apples
On the cold dark branches
And their dresses and little coats
Made sodden gestures in the wind.

He did not laugh or weep or stamp
His heavy feet. He set to work at once
Lifting them tenderly down
Into a straw basket which was fixed
By a golden strap to his shoulder.
Only one did he drop - a soft pretty child
Whose hair was the color of watered milk.
She fell into the long grass
And he could not find her
Though he searched until his fingers
Bled and the full light came.

He shook his fist at the sky and called
God a bitter name.
But no answer was made and the giant
Got down on his knees before the tree
And putting his hands about the trunk
Shook
Until all the children had fallen
Into the grass. Then he pranced and stamped
Them to jelly. And still he felt no peace.
He took his half-full basket and set it afire,
Holding it by the handle until
Everything had been burned. He saw now
Two men on steaming horses approaching
From the direction of the world
And taking a little silver flute
Out of his pocket he played tune
After tune until they came up to him. "

― Kenneth Patchen

16 " 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. "

― Kenneth Patchen

17 " Ah I can see that....
You can see anything once you've been told it's there to see "

― Kenneth Patchen , The Journal of Albion Moonlight

18 " The question is not: do we believe in God? but rather: does God believe in us? And the answer is: only an unbeliever could have created our image of God; and only a false God could be satisfied with it. "

― Kenneth Patchen , The Journal of Albion Moonlight

19 " The animal I wanted
Couldn't get into the world
I can hear it crying
When I sit like this away from life "

― Kenneth Patchen , Collected Poems

20 " This is the evening of the two-fisted prayer "

― Kenneth Patchen , Collected Poems

1
2
3