Half-Light Quotes

“God said: GOD MADE YOU. GOD DOES NOT CARE IF YOU ARE "GUILTY" OR NOT. I said: I CARE IF I AM GUILTY! I CARE IF I AM GUILTY!... God was silent. Everything was SILENT.”
― Frank Bidart, Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965-2016

“1. Man is a MORAL animal.

2. You can get human beings to do anything — IF you convince them it is moral.

3. You can convince human beings anything is moral.”
― Frank Bidart, Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965-2016

“so try as you will
you cannot make me feel
embarrassment

at what I find beautiful.”
― Frank Bidart, Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965-2016

“…Then, I said to myself:

'HISTORY IS HUMAN NATURE—;

TO SAY I AM GUILTY

IS TO ACCEPT IMPLICATION

IN THE HUMAN RACE. . .'

—Now, for months and months,
I have found

ANOTHER MAN in me—;

HE is NOT me—; I

am afraid of him …”
― Frank Bidart, Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965-2016

“Because you could not master whatever enmeshed you

you became its slave -

You learned this bitterly, early. In order not to become its slave

you had to become its master.

You became its master.

Even as master, of course, you remain its slave.”
― Frank Bidart, Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965-2016

“The planet turns there without you, beautiful. Exiled by death you cannot touch it. Weird joy to watch postulates

lived out and discarded, something crowed inside us always craving to become something glistening outside us, the relentless planet

showing itself the logic of what is buried inside it. To love existence is to love what is indifferent to you

you think, as you watch it turn there, beautiful. World that can know itself only by world, soon it must colonize and infect the stars.

You are an hypothesis of flesh. What you will teach the stars is constant rage at the constant prospect of not-being.”
― Frank Bidart, Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965-2016

“Couples stay together when each of the two remains
a necessity for the other.
which you cannot know, until they cease to be.”
― Frank Bidart, Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965-2016

“Understand that there is a beast within you that can drink till it is sick, but cannot drink til it is satisfied”
― Frank Bidart, Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965-2016

“Whether you love what you love
Or live in divided ceaseless revolt against it
What you love is your fate”
― Frank Bidart, Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965-2016

“The hour that must follow the eleventh hour
is blank within my eye: --
I do not know what will make the sun rise again.”
― Frank Bidart, Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965-2016

“La șaptezeci și doi de ani, viitorul e ceea ce jelesc.

Din facultate n-am uitat-o niciodată pe Mașa
în Pescărușul spunând Sunt în doliu după viața mea.”
― Frank Bidart, Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965-2016

“Werther s-a sinucis, apoi tineri din toată Europa l-au urmat și s-au sinucis și ei, mai puțin autorul lui, Goethe, viclean maestru al practicii, a trăit.”
― Frank Bidart, Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965-2016

“Cum acolo unde face ce face, el
nu este: Cum atunci când face nu este:

De-aici baza înstrăinării noastre de sine.

- Marx, în 1844”
― Frank Bidart, Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965-2016