43 quotes
We are old-timers,
each of us holds a locked razor.
Life Studies (1959)
The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.
For the Union Dead (1964)
Rome, if built at all, must be built in a day
Notebook (1970)
It's terrible, Bob, to think that all I've suffered, and all the suffering I've caused, might have arisen from the lack of a little salt in my brain.
Robert Giroux's introduction to Lowell's Collected Prose (1987)
Flabby, bald, lobotomized,
he drifted in a sheepish calm,
where no agonizing reappraisal
jarred his concentration on the electric chair—
hanging like an oasis in his air
of lost connections.
Life Studies (1959)
I keep no rank nor station.
Cured, I am frizzled, stale and small.
Life Studies (1959)
I saw the sky descending, black and white,
Not blue, on Boston.
Lord Weary's Castle (1946)
I am tired. Everyone's tired of my turmoil
For the Union Dead (1964)
It has taken me the time since you died
to discover you are as human as I am...
if I am.
Day by Day (1977)
if we see a light at the end of the tunnel,
it's the light of an oncoming train.
If I could go through it all again,
the slender iron rungs of growing up,
I would be as young as any,
a child lost
in unreality and loud music.
Day by Day (1977)
Only teaching on Tuesdays, bookworming
in pajamas fresh from the washer each morning,
I hog a whole house on Boston's
"hardly passionate Marlborough Street."
Life Studies (1959)
I doodle handlebar
moustaches on the last Russian Czar
Life Studies (1959)
I saw the spiders marching through the air,
Swimming from tree to tree that mildewed day
In latter August when the hay
Came creaking to the barn.
Lord Weary's Castle (1946)
Father, forgive me
my injuries,
as I forgive
those I
have injured!
You never climbed
Mount Sion, yet left
dinosaur
death-steps on the crust,
where I must walk.
For the Union Dead (1964)
At forty-five,
What next, what next?
I meet my father,
my age, still alive.
For the Union Dead (1964)
This is the Black Widow, death.
Lord Weary's Castle (1946)
My eyes have seen what my hand did.
The Dolphin (1973)
My mind’s not right.
A car radio bleats,
"Love, O careless Love...." I hear
my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,
as if my hand were at its throat....
I myself am hell;
nobody's here.
Life Studies (1959)
The line must terminate.
Yet my heart rises, I know I’ve gladdened a lifetime
knotting, undoing a fishnet of tarred rope;
the net will hang on the wall when the fish are eaten,
nailed like illegible bronze on the futureless future.
The Dolphin (1973)