When We Were Here Together
Read 'When We Were Here Together' by 'Kenneth Patchen' and provide your summary and literary analysis in the comments section below.
when we were here together in a place we did not know, nor one
another.
A bit of grass held between the teeth for a moment, bright hair on the
wind.
What we were we did not know, nor even the grass or the flame of
hair turning to ash on the wind.
But they lied about that. From the beginning they lied. To the child,
telling him that there was somewhere anger against him, and a
hatred against him, and the only reason for his being in the
world.
But never did they tell him that the only evil and danger was in
themselves; that they alone were the prisoners and the betrayers;
that they - they alone - were responsible for what was being done
in the world.
And they told the child to starve and to kill the child that was within
him; for only by doing this could he become a useful and adjusted
member of the community which they had prepared for him.
And this time, alas, they did not lie.
And with the death of the child was born a thing that had neither
the character of a man nor the character of a child, but was a
horrible and monstrous parody of the two; and it is in this world
now that the flesh of man’s spirit lies twisted and despoiled under
the indifferent stars.
When we were here together in a place we did not know, nor one
another.
O green the bit of warm grass between our teeth. O beautiful the hair
of our mortal goddess on the indifferent wind.
When We Were Here Together Summary and Analysis
Kenneth Patchen begins in a vision of first presence, where two people are together in a place they do not yet understand and do not fully recognize one another. The opening and closing return to that same moment, but the poem moves outward into a fierce moral argument: human beings are taught to mistrust themselves, to suppress innocence, and to accept a damaged social order as normal. What starts as a brief, luminous recollection becomes a denunciation of the forces that deform conscience and imagination.
The poem's emotional center lies in the contrast between natural innocence and imposed corruption. The image of grass held between the teeth and bright hair in the wind suggests a free, bodily, almost mythic vitality, yet that vitality is set against the claim that the world is governed by hatred and instruction in self-betrayal. Patchen presents childhood not simply as a stage of life, but as a source of inner wholeness that society commands people to destroy. The result is not maturity in any noble sense, but a monstrous compromise: a person made functional and obedient, yet spiritually ruined. The final return to the opening scene gives the poem a haunting tenderness, as if the lost original beauty still flickers beneath all the damage.
Tone in When We Were Here Together
Patchen's tone is accusatory, mournful, and defiantly tender all at once. He speaks with the force of moral outrage when he denounces the lies that deform human life, yet his closing images recover a soft, almost aching beauty. The mood for the reader is unsettling because the poem moves between intimacy and indictment: the remembered brightness of shared being is repeatedly shadowed by a vision of cruelty, loss, and spiritual damage.
This literary analysis was generated with AI and may contain interpretive differences. Provide your analysis in the comments section.
Themes in When We Were Here Together
- Innocence and corruption - The poem contrasts an original state of wonder with the later destruction of that purity by social pressure and false teaching.
- Social conditioning - Patchen attacks the way institutions and communities train people to accept fear, obedience, and self-denial as normal.
- Loss of the inner child - The child within the self represents imagination, openness, and moral clarity, all of which are sacrificed in the name of conformity.
- Spiritual deformity - The poem suggests that living by lies produces not health or adulthood, but a damaged and half-human existence.
- Human responsibility - Behind the poem's anger is the claim that cruelty is not natural fate; it is created and maintained by human beings themselves.
- Memory and return - The closing repetition of the opening scene turns memory into a form of resistance, preserving a glimpse of wholeness against the poem's darker vision.
Literary Devices in When We Were Here Together
- Repetition - The opening lines return at the end, creating a circular structure that frames the poem's moral denunciation with a memory of shared presence.
- Free verse - The unforced, irregular lineation gives the poem the feeling of urgent thought and intense speech rather than formal decoration.
- Anaphora - Repeated phrasing such as the insistence on what was not known and the repeated accusation of lying intensifies the poem's rhetoric.
- Metaphor - The death of the child and the birth of a monstrous parody stand for the loss of innocence and the creation of a socially warped self.
- Contrast - Gentle natural images are placed beside images of betrayal, starvation, and destruction, sharpening the poem's ethical tension.
- Apostrophe and exclamation - The brief outcry in the ending adds emotional release and turns the closing image into a direct act of praise.
- Personification - Stars are described as indifferent, helping to establish a universe that does not intervene in human suffering.
- Accumulation - The poem builds through a series of claims and accusations, each one deepening the sense of a world systematically damaged.
Symbolism in When We Were Here Together
- Grass - The bit of grass suggests natural innocence, physical play, and a brief contact with the living world before corruption takes hold.
- Hair on the wind - The moving hair suggests beauty, vitality, and freedom, but its later turning to ash hints at mortality and loss.
- The child - The child symbolizes the vulnerable inner self, the part of a person capable of wonder and moral wholeness.
- Starvation - Starvation represents the stripping away of inner life, creativity, and emotional nourishment under social pressure.
- The indifferent stars - The stars symbolize a vast, uncaring cosmos in which human damage goes unanswered.
- Useful and adjusted member of the community - This social ideal functions as a symbol of conformity that costs the self its integrity.
Historical Context of When We Were Here Together
Kenneth Patchen wrote within the broad mid-twentieth-century American context of political violence, war anxiety, and distrust of social conformity. His poetry often resists tidy realism and uses prophetic, urgent language to challenge the emotional and moral habits of modern life. This poem fits that larger tendency by treating civilization not as a stable good, but as something that can train people away from compassion and inward truth.
The poem also reflects a modernist and postwar concern with alienation: the individual is formed under pressure from institutions, family, and culture, yet those shaping forces may be destructive rather than protective. Its plain but forceful diction, symbolic imagery, and moral intensity place it in conversation with twentieth-century poets who questioned authority and searched for a damaged but still imaginable wholeness.
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