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—
nor ever say
We wanted more; we looked to find
An open door, an utter deed of love,
Transforming day’s evil darkness;
but We found extended hell and fog Upon the earth,
and within the head
A rotting bog of lean huge graves.

The Wolf of Winter

The wolf of winter
Devours roads and towns
In his white hunger.

The wolf of winter
Sticks his paw into the city’s rancid pot,
Wanly stirring its soup of whores and suicides.

O the wolf of winter
Crunched on the bones of the poor
In his chill white cave.

The wolf of winter . . .
The grim, the cold, the white
Beautiful winter wolf
That feeds on our world.

Gautama in the Deer Park at Benares

In a hut of mud and tire
Sits this single man–“Not to want
Money, to want a life in the world,
To want no trinkets on my name”–
And he was rich; his life lives where
Death cannot go; his honor stares
At the sun.

The fawn sleeps. The little winds
Ruffle the earth’s green hair. It is
Wonderful to live. My sword rusts
In the pleasant rain. I shall not think
Anymore. I touch the face of my friend;
He shows his dirty teeth as he scratches
At a flea–and we grin. It is warm
And the rice stirs usefully in our bellies.

The fawn raises its head–the sun floods
Its soft eye with the kingdoms of life–
I think we should all go to sleep now,
And not care anymore.

— Kenneth Patchen