AUGUST 22, 1939



The centuries have changed little in this art, The subjects are still the same.  “For Christ’s sake take off your clothes & get into bed, We are not going to live forever.” “Petals fall from the rose,” We fall from life, Values fall from history like men from shellfire, Only a minimum survives, Only an unknown achievement. They can put it all on the headstones, In all the battlefields, “Poor guy, he never knew what it was all about.” Spectacled men will come with shovels in a thousand years, Give lectures in universities on cultural advances, cultural lags. . . . This year we made four major ascents, Camped for two weeks at timberline, Watched Mars swim close to the earth, Watched the black aurora of war Spread over the sky of a decayed civilization. These are the last terrible years of authority. The disease has reached its crisis, Ten thousand years of power, The struggle of two laws, The rule of iron & spilled blood, The abiding solidarity of living blood & brain.  — Kenneth Rexroth,  “August 22, 1939,” (The anniversary of Sacco & Vanzetti’s execution, in 1927, evening of the 22nd, actually the wee hours of the 23rd)  anarchist



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Many poems published online by Ken Knabb, see
bopsecrets.org/rexroth/poems/1930s.htm

For more on Kenneth Rexroth, see the Daily Bleed's Anarchist Encyclopedia page,
recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/RexrothKenneth.htm

& especially Ken Knabb's The Relevance of Kenneth Rexroth,
bopsecrets.org/PS/rexroth1.htm



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