29 Quotes by Robert Hayden

their vaunted liberty no body pushes me around i have heard them say land of the free they sing what dothey 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

Ars Longa Which is crueller Vita Brevis life or art?

all art is pain suffered and outlived

How shall the mind keep warm save at spectral fires--how thrive but by the light of paradox?

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

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.

It was as though you struggled against fierce current jagged with debris to save me then. I am desperate still.

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?

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