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As We Are So Wonderfully Done With Each Other

As we are so wonderfully done with each other

We can walk into our separate sleep

on floors of music where the milkwhite cloak of childhood

lies

oh my love, my golden lark, my soft long doll

Your lips have splashed my dull house with print of flowers

My hands are crooked where they spilled over your dear

curving

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by Kenneth Patchen

The Artist's Duty

So it is the duty of the artist to discourage all traces of shame

To extend all boundaries

To fog them in right over the plate

To kill only what is ridiculous

To establish problem

To ignore solutions

To listen to no one

To omit nothing

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by Kenneth Patchen

The Naked Land

A beast stands at my eye.

I cook my senses in a dark fire.

The old wombs rot and the new mother

Approaches with the footsteps of a world.

Who are the people of this unscaled heaven?

What beckons?

Whose blood hallows this grim land?

What slithers along the watershed of my human sleep?

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by Kenneth Patchen

Fall of the Evening Star

Speak softly; sun going down

Out of sight. Come near me now.

Dear dying fall of wings as birds

complain against the gathering dark…

Exaggerate the green blood in grass;

the music of leaves scraping space;

Multiply the stillness by one sound;

by one syllable of your name…

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by Kenneth Patchen

Let Us Have Madness

Let us have madness openly.

O men Of my generation.

Let us follow

The footsteps of this slaughtered age:

See it trail across Time's dim land

Into the closed house of eternity

With the noise that dying has,

With the face that dead things wear—

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by Kenneth Patchen

Saturday Night in the Parthenon

Tiny green birds skate over the surface of the room.

A naked girl prepares a basin with steaming water,

And in the corner away from the hearth, the red wheels

Of an up-ended chariot slowly turn.

After a long moment, the door to the other world opens

And the golden figure of a man appears. He stands

Ruddy as a salmon beside the niche where are kept

The keepsakes of the Prince of Earth; then sadly, drawing

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by Kenneth Patchen

The Hangman's Great Hands

And all that is this day. . .

The boy with cap slung over what had been a face. ..

Somehow the cop will sleep tonight, will make love to his

wife…

Anger won't help. I was born angry. Angry that my father was

being burnt alive in the mills; Angry that none of us knew

anything but filth, and poverty. Angry because I was that very

one somebody was supposed To be fighting for

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by Kenneth Patchen

Creation

Wherever the dead are there they are and

Nothing more. But you and I can expect

To see angels in the meadowgrass that look

Like cows -

And wherever we are in paradise

in furnished room without bath and

six flights up

Is all God! We read

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by Kenneth Patchen

In the footsteps of the walking air

Sky's prophetic chickens weave their cloth of awe

And hillsides lift green wings in somber journeying.

Night in his soft haste bumps on the shoulders of the abyss

And a single drop of dark blood covers the earth.

Now is the China of the spirit at walking

In my reaches.

A sable organ sounds in my gathered will

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by Kenneth Patchen

We Go Out Together In the Staring Town

We go out together into the staring town

And buy cheese and bread and little jugs with

flowered labels

Everywhere is a tent where we put on our whirling

show

A great deal has been said of the handless serpents

Which war has set loose in the gay milk of our

heads

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by Kenneth Patchen

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

158

by Kenneth Patchen

Irkalla's White Caves

I believe that a young woman

Is standing in a circle of lions

In the other side of the sky.

In a little while I must carry her the flowers

Which only fade here; and she will not cry

If my hands are not very full.

Fiery antlers toss within the forests of heaven

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by Kenneth Patchen