The Complete Poems Quotes

“I see at last that all the knowledge

I wrung from the darkness—that the darkness flung me—
Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing,
The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darkness
And we call it wisdom. It is pain.”
― Randall Jarrell, The Complete Poems

“The cat's asleep; I whisper "kitten"
Till he stirs a little and begins to purr--
He doesn't wake. Today out on the limb
(The limb he thinks he can't climb down from)
He mewed until I heard him in the house.
I climbed up to get him down: he mewed.
What he says and what he sees are limited.
My own response is even more constricted.
I think, "It's lucky; what you have is too."
What do you have except--well, me?
I joke about it but it's not a joke;
The house and I are all he remembers.
Next month how will he guess that it is winter
And not just entropy, the universe
Plunging at last into its cold decline?
I cannot think of him without a pang.
Poor rumpled thing, why don't you see
That you have no more, really, than a man?
Men aren't happy; why are you?”
― Randall Jarrell, The Complete Poems

“The Face
Die alte Frau, die alte Marshchallin!
Not good anymore, not beautiful—
Not even young.
This isn’t mine.
Where is the old one, the old ones?
Those were mine.

It’s so: I have pictures,
Not such old ones; people behaved
Differently then…when they meet me they say:
You haven’t changed.
I want to say: You haven’t looked.

This is what happens to everyone.
At first you get bigger, you know more,
Then something goes wrong.
You are, and you say: I am—
And you were…I’ve been too long.

I know, there’s no saying no.
But just the same you say it. No.
I’ll point to myself and say: I’m not like this.
I’m the same as always inside.
—And even that’s not so.

I thought: if nothing happens…
and nothing happened.

Here I am.
But it’s not right.
If just living can do this,
Living is more dangerous than anything:

It is terrible to be alive.”
― Randall Jarrell, The Complete Poems

“May I die, not on the day When it no longer matters that I’m a woman, But on the day that it no longer matters That I am human: on that day When they put into me more than thy get out of me. So I say, in human vanity: have they ever Got out of me more than they put into me? May I die on the day the world ends.”
― Randall Jarrell, The Complete Poems

“Oh, Tatyana,
The Angel comes: better to squawk like a chicken
Than to say with truth, “But I’m a good girl,”
And Meet his Challenge with a last firm strange
Uncomprehending smile; and—then, then!—see
The blind date that has stood you up: your life.
(For all this, if it isn’t, perhaps, life,
Has yet, at least, a language of its own
Different from the books’; worse than the books’.)
And yet, the ways we miss our lives are life.”
― Randall Jarrell, The Complete Poems