A Vision for the People of America
O the poets with death on their tongues
shall come to address you.
The fat nonsense will end.
You will drown in your rot.
The poets with death on their tongues
shall come to address you.
The slimy hypocrisy will end.
You will go down in your filth.
O the poets with death on their tongues
shall come to address you.
You will drown in your rot.
The poets with death on their tongues
shall come to address you.
The slimy hypocrisy will end.
You will go down in your filth.
O the poets with death on their tongues
shall come to address you.
O Fiery River
O fiery river
Flow out over the land
Men have destroyed the roads of wonder,
And their cities squat like black toads
Flow out over the land
Men have destroyed the roads of wonder,
And their cities squat like black toads
In the orchards of life.
Nothing is clean, or real, or as a girl,
Naked to love, or to be a man with.
The arts of this American land
Stink in the air of mountains;
What has made these men sick rats
That they find out every cheap hole?
How can these squeak of greatness?
Push your drugstore-culture into the sewer
With the rest of your creation.
The bell wasn't meant to toll for you.
Keep your filthy little hands off it.
O fiery river
Spread over this American land.
Drown out the falsity, the smug contempt
For what does not pay . . .
What would you pay Christ to die again?
Nothing is clean, or real, or as a girl,
Naked to love, or to be a man with.
The arts of this American land
Stink in the air of mountains;
What has made these men sick rats
That they find out every cheap hole?
How can these squeak of greatness?
Push your drugstore-culture into the sewer
With the rest of your creation.
The bell wasn't meant to toll for you.
Keep your filthy little hands off it.
O fiery river
Spread over this American land.
Drown out the falsity, the smug contempt
For what does not pay . . .
What would you pay Christ to die again?
Note: Both poems are from Kenneth Patchen's Selected Poems, published by New Directions.
