SOURCE: “The Madman Runs to the East,” in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Image Books, 1965, pp. 348-50.

In the following excerpt, Merton uses some verses of Oppen's as the basis of a homily.

Priests and ministers suddenly believe it urgent to assure everyone that “the world” is telling us the truth—not always making clear what world they mean. And often those who insist that “the world” is deceiving us mean only the world which refuses them and their message, not their own world, their own tight system of fragments of the past held together by money and armies.

I think only the poets are still sure in their prophetic sense that the world lies, and George Oppen has said it well:

                                        They await War, and the news Is war As always 

That the juices may flow in them And the juices lie. 

This psychic and chemical dialogue...