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1 " 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
2 " Sundays too my father got up earlyand put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that achedfrom labor in the weekday weather madebanked 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 coldand polished my good shoes as well.What did I know, what did I knowof love's austere and lonely offices? "
3 " I will no longer ask for more than you have freely given or can give. "
4 " World I have loved and loving hated, is it your sickness luxuriating in my body's world? "
5 " How shall the mind keep warm save at spectral fires--how thrive but by the light of paradox? "
6 " It was as though you struggled against fierce current jagged with debris to save me then. I am desperate still. "
7 " In time, you will come to regard my questioningwith a certain pained amusement; in time, get soyou would hardly find it possible to live withoutmy joke and me. "
8 " confess i am curiously drawn unmentionable tothe 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 "
9 " 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 "
10 " 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. "
11 " The trees themselves, as in winters past, will survive their burdening, broken thrive. "
12 " Unable to sleep, or pray, I standby the window looking outat moonstruck trees a December stormhas bowed with ice.Maple and mountain ash bendunder its glassy weight,their cracked branches falling uponthe 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? "
13 " We fight our wish to die. "
14 " Oh, what a world we make,oppressor and oppressed.Our world--this violent ghetto, slum of the spirit raging against itself.We hate kill destroyin the name of human goodour killing and our hate destroy. "
15 " Know that love has chosen youto live his crucial purposes. "
16 " all art is pain suffered and outlived "
17 " The trees themselves, as in winters past, will survive their burdening, broken thrive. And am I less to You, my God, than they? "
18 " What did I know, what did I knowof love’s austere and lonely offices? "
19 " What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices? "
20 " 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. "