Quotes from Robert Hayden

Shuttles in the rocking loom of history, the dark ships move, the dark ships move, their bright ironical names like jests of kindness on a murderer's mouth

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.

Art is not escape, but a way of finding order in chaos, a way of confronting life.

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 cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know Of love's austere and lonely offices?

The trees themselves, as in winters past, will survive their burdening, broken thrive.

Unable to sleep, or pray, I stand by the window looking out at moonstruck trees a December storm has bowed with ice. Maple and mountain ash bend under its glassy weight, their cracked branches falling upon the 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?

Oh, what a world we make, oppressor and oppressed. Our world-- this violent ghetto, slum of the spirit raging against itself. We hate kill destroy in the name of human good our killing and our hate destroy.

Know that love has chosen you to live his crucial purposes.

all art is pain suffered and outlived

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

confess i am curiously drawn unmentionable to the 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

The trees themselves, as in winters past, will survive their burdening, broken thrive. And am I less to You, my God, than they?

O Jesus burning on the lily cross... O night, rawhead and bloodybones night... O night betrayed by darkness not its own.

What did I know, what did I know of love's austere and lonely offices?

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.

We fight our wish to die.

What did I know, what did I know of love's austere and lonely offices?

Sleepless, I stare from the dark hospital room at shadows of a flower and its leaves the nightlight fixes like a blotto on the corridor wall.

In time, you will come to regard my questioning with a certain pained amusement; in time, get so you would hardly find it possible to live without my joke and me.

Know that love has chosen you to live his crucial purposes. Know that love has chosen you. And will not pamper you nor spare; demands obedience to all the rigorous laws of risk, does not pamper, will not spare. Oh, master now love's instruments— complex and not for the fearful, simple and not for the foolish. Master now love's instruments. I who love you tell you this, even as the pitiful killer waits for me, I who love you tell you this.

Fed the fires that consume us now, the fire that will save.

Ars Longa Which is crueller Vita Brevis life or art?

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

Fury of truth: fury of righteousness become angelic evil demonic good?