Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitive instincts.
Truly men hate the truth; they’d liefer meet a tiger on the road.
Corruption never has been compulsory; when the cities lie at the monster’s feet there are left the mountains.
They import and they consume reality.
You making haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing republic.
Hear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan.
If millions are born millions must die.
Well: the day is a poem but too much Like one of Jeffers’s, crusted with blood and barbaric omens Painful to excess, inhuman as a hawk’s cry.
The heads of strong old age are beautiful beyond all grace of youth.
As for me, I would rather be a worm in a wild apple than a son of man. But we are what we are, and we might remember not to hate any person, for all are vicious; And not to be astonished at any evil, all are deserved; And not to fear death; it is the only way to be cleansed.
That public men publish falsehoods Is nothing new. That America must accept Like the historical republics corruption and empire Has been known for years. Be angry at the sun for setting If these things anger you.
God is a lion that comes in the night. God is a hawk gliding among the stars – If all the stars and the earth, and the living flesh of the night that flows in between them, and whatever is beyond them Were that one bird. He has a bloody beak and harsh talons, he pounces and tears.
This wild swan of a world is no hunter’s game.
We have to live like people in a web of knives, we mustn’t reach out our hands or we get them gashed.
The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, life is your child, but there is in me Older and harder than life and more impartial, the eye that watched before there was an ocean.
I hate my verses, every line, every word. Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try One grass-blade’s curve, or the throat of one bird That clings to twig, ruffled against white sky. Oh cracked and twilight mirrors ever to catch One color, one glinting flash, of the splendor of things.
O that our souls could scale a height like this, A mighty mountain swept o’er by the bleak Keen winds of heaven; and, standing on that peak Above the blinding clouds of prejudice, Would we could see all truly as it is; The calm eternal truth would keep us meek.
Humanity is the start of the race; I say Humanity is the mould to break away from, the crust to break through, the coal to break into fire, The atom to be split.
What but the wolf’s tooth whittled so fine. The fleet limbs of the antelope?
Old violence is not too old to beget new values.
No one but death the redeemer will humble that head.