Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, PATTERNS, by JAMES OPPENHEIM


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

PATTERNS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Would you lay a pattern on life and say, thus shall ye live?
Last Line: For the only sin is death, and the only virtue to be altogether alive and your own authentic self.
Subject(s): Death; Growth; Life; Order; Self; Sin; Dead, The


WOULD you lay a pattern on life and say, thus shall ye live?
I tell you that is a denial of life:
I say that thus we pour our spirits in a mould, and they cake, and die...

Thus, indeed, we become the good and the respectable:
Thus we neither lie nor steal, and we commit neither murder nor adultery:
But truly when I look at the holy ones, the pillars of society,
I am fain to go and get drunk or go talk with publicans and sinners...

I want to go to the man who quickens me:
I want the gift of life; the flame of his spirit eating along the tinder of my heart:
I want to feel the floodgates within flung open and the tides pouring through me:
I want to take what I am and bring it to fruit.

Quicken me, and I will grow:
Touch me with flame, and the blossoms will open and the fruit appear...

Call forth in me a creator, and the god will answer...
And then if I commit what you call a sin,
Better so...
It will not be a sin: it will be a mere breaking of your patterns:
For the only sin is death, and the only virtue to be altogether alive and your own authentic self.





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