Charles Olson Quotes
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Part I, 4
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When I saw him, he was at the door, but it did not matter, he was already sliding along the wall of the night, losing himself in some crack of the ruins. That it should have been he who said, 'The kingfishers! who cares for their feathers now?' His last words had been, 'The pool is slime.'
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The legends are legends. Dead, hung up indoors, the kingfisher will not indicate a favoring wind, or avert the thunderbolt. Nor, by its nesting, still the waters, with the new year, for seven days. It is true, it does nest with the opening year, but not on the waters.
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I'm one of the cliches that has grown up.
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And all now is war Where so lately there was peace, and the sweet brotherhood, the use of tilled fields.
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This country has been unconscious, and it's got to awake. That's my belief.
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Forgive me if I sleep until I wake up.
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When the attentions change / the jungle leaps in even the stones are split they rive
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This morning of the small snow I count the blessings, the leak in the faucet which makes of the sink time, the drop of the water on water.
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The poem, for me, is simply the first sound realized in the modality of being.
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You don't help people in your poems. I've been trying to help people all my life - that's my trouble.
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I'm trying to climb up both walls at once.
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with what violence benevolence is bought what cost in gesture justice brings what wrongs domestic rights involve what stalks this silence
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The heroes of the present will retreat to the imitation they are anyhow.
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What does not change / is the will to change
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There is a grace of life which is still yours, my dear Europe.
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I'm sorry, but I was born with a towel on my head.
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When will government cease being a nuisance to everybody?
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Not one death but many, not accumulation but change, the feed-back proves, the feed-back is the law
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I don't live for poetry. I live far more than anybody else does.