Paterson (Revised Edition)

by William Carlos Williams

  machinations

  drawing their substance from the noise of the pouring

  river

  animate a thousand automatons. Who because they

  neither know their sources nor the sills of their

  disappointments walk outside their bodies aimlessly

  for the most part,

  locked and forgot in their desires—unroused.

  —Say it, no ideas but in things—

  nothing but the blank faces of the houses

  and cylindrical trees

  bent, forked by preconception and accident—

  split, furrowed, creased, mottled, stained—

  secret—into the body of the light!

  From above, higher than the spires, higher

  even than the office towers, from oozy fields

  abandoned to grey beds of dead grass,

  black sumac, withered weed-stalks,

  mud and thickets cluttered with dead leaves—

  the river comes pouring in above the city

  and crashes from the edge of the gorge

  in a recoil of spray and rainbow mists—

  (What common language to unravel?

  . . combed into straight lines

  from that rafter of a rock’s

  lip.)

  A man like a city and a woman like a flower

  —who are in love. Two women. Three women.

  Innumerable women, each like a flower.

  But

  only one man—like a city.

  In regard to the poems I left with you; will you be so kind as to return them to me at my new address? And without bothering to comment upon them if you should find that embarrassing—for it was the human situation and not the literary one that motivated my phone call and visit.

  Besides, I know myself to be more the woman than the poet; and to concern myself less with the publishers of poetry than with … living …

  But they set up an investigation … and my doors are bolted forever (I hope forever) against all public welfare workers, professional do-gooders and the like.

  Jostled as are the waters approaching

  the brink, his thoughts

  interlace, repel and cut under,

  rise rock-thwarted and turn aside

  but forever strain forward—or strike

  an eddy and whirl, marked by a

  leaf or curdy spume, seeming

  to forget .

  Retake later the advance and

  are replaced by succeeding hordes

  pushing forward—they coalesce now

  glass-smooth with their swiftness,

  quiet or seem to quiet as at the close

  they leap to the conclusion and

  fall, fall in air! as if

  floating, relieved of their weight,

  split apart, ribbons; dazed, drunk

  with the catastrophe of the descent

  floating unsupported

  to hit the rocks: to a thunder,

  as if lightning had struck

  All lightness lost, weight regained in

  the repulse, a fury of

  escape driving them to rebound

  upon those coming after—

  keeping nevertheless to the stream, they

  retake their course, the air full

  of the tumult and of spray

  connotative of the equal air, coeval,

  filling the void

  And there, against him, stretches the low mountain.

  The Park’s her head, carved, above the Falls, by the quiet

  river; Colored crystals the secret of those rocks;

  farms and ponds, laurel and the temperate wild cactus,

  yellow flowered . . facing him, his

  arm supporting her, by the Valley of the Rocks, asleep.

  Pearls at her ankles, her monstrous hair

  spangled with apple-blossoms is scattered about into

  the back country, waking their dreams—where the deer run

  and the wood-duck nests protecting his gallant plumage.

  In February 1857, David Hower, a poor shoemaker with a large family, out of work and money, collected a lot of mussels from Notch Brook near the City of Paterson. He found in eating them many hard substances. At first he threw them away but at last submitted some of them to a jeweler who gave him twenty-five to thirty dollars for the lot. Later he found others. One pearl of fine lustre was sold to Tiffany for $900 and later to the Empress Eugenie for $2,000 to be known thenceforth as the “Queen Pearl,” the finest of its sort in the world today.

  News of this sale created such excitement that search for the pearls was started throughout the country. The Unios (mussels) at Notch Brook and elsewhere were gathered by the millions and destroyed often with little or no result. A large round pearl, weighing 400 grains which would have been the finest pearl of modern times, was ruined by boiling open the shell.

  Twice a month Paterson receives

  communications from the Pope and Jacques

  Barzun

  (Isocrates). His works

  have been done into French

  and Portuguese. And clerks in the post-

  office ungum rare stamps from

  his packages and steal them for their

  childrens’ albums .

  Say it! No ideas but in things. Mr.

  Paterson has gone away

  to rest and write. Inside the bus one sees

  his thoughts sitting and standing. His

  thoughts alight and scatter—

  Who are these people (how complex

  the mathematic) among whom I see myself

  in the regularly ordered plateglass of

  his thoughts, glimmering before shoes and bicycles?

  They walk incommunicado, the

  equation is beyond solution, yet

  its sense is clear—that they may live

  his thought is listed in the Telephone

  Directory—

  And derivatively, for the Great Falls,

  PISS-AGH! the giant lets fly! good Muncie, too

  They craved the miraculous!

  A gentleman of the Revolutionary Army, after describing the Falls, thus describes another natural curiosity then existing in the community: In the afternoon we were invited to visit another curiosity in the neighborhood. This is a monster in human form, he is twenty-seven years of age, his face from the upper part of his forehead to the end of his chin, measures twenty-seven inches, and around the upper part of his head is twenty-one inches: his eyes and nose are remarkably large and prominent, chin long and pointed. His features are coarse, irregular and disgusting, his voice rough and sonorous. His body is twenty-seven inches in length, his limbs are small and much deformed, and he has the use of one hand only. He has never been able to sit up, as he cannot support the enormous weight of his head; but he is constantly in a large cradle, with his head supported on pillows. He is visited by great numbers of people, and is peculiarly fond of the company of clergymen, always inquiring for them among his visitors, and taking great pleasure in receiving religious instruction. General Washington made him a visit, and asked “whether he was a Whig or a Tory.” He replied that he had never taken an active part on either side.

  A wonder! A wonder!

  From the ten houses Hamilton saw when he looked (at the falls!) and kept his counsel, by the middle of the century—the mills had drawn a heterogeneous population. There were in 1870, native born 20,711, which would of course include children of foreign parents; foreign 12,868 of whom 237 were French, 1,420 German, 3,343 English—(Mr. Lambert who later built the Castle among them), 5,124 Irish, 879 Scotch, 1,360 Hollanders and 170 Swiss—

  Around the falling waters the Furies hurl!

  Violence gathers, spins in their heads summoning

  them:

  The twaalft, or striped bass was also abundant, and even sturgeon, of a huge bigness, were frequently caught:—On Sunday, August 31, 1817, one seven feet six inches long, and weighing 126 po
unds, was captured a short distance below the Falls basin. He was pelted with stones by boys until he was exhausted, whereupon one of them, John Winters, waded into the water and clambered on the back of the huge fish, while another seized him by the throat and gills, and brought him ashore. The Bergen Express and. Paterson Advertiser of Wednesday, September 3, 1817, devoted half a column to an account of the incident, under the heading, “The Monster Taken.”

  They begin!

  The perfections are sharpened

  The flower spreads its colored petals

  wide in the sun

  But the tongue of the bee

  misses them

  They sink back into the loam

  crying out

  —you may call it a cry

  that creeps over them, a shiver

  as they wilt and disappear:

  Marriage come to have a shuddering

  implication

  Crying out

  or take a lesser satisfaction:

  a few go

  to the Coast without gain—

  The language is missing them

  they die also

  incommunicado.

  The language, the language

  fails them

  They do not know the words

  or have not

  the courage to use them .

  —girls from

  families that have decayed and

  taken to the hills: no words.

  They may look at the torrent in

  their minds

  and it is foreign to them. .

  They turn their backs

  and grow faint—but recover!

  Life is sweet

  they say: the language!

  —the language

  is divorced from their minds,

  the language . . the language!

  If there was not beauty, there was a strangeness and a bold association of wild and cultured life grew up together in the Ramapos: two phases.

  In the hills, where the brown trout slithered among the shallow stones, Ring-wood—where the old Ryerson farm had been—among its velvet lawns, was ringed with forest trees, the butternut, and the elm, the white oak, the chestnut and the beech, the birches, the tupelo, the sweet-gum, the wild cherry and the hackleberry with its red tumbling fruit.

  While in the forest clustered the ironworkers’ cabins, the charcoal burners, the lime kiln workers—hidden from lovely Ringwood—where General Washington, gracing any poem, up from Pompton for rest after the traitors’ hangings could be at ease—and the links were made for the great chain across the Hudson at West Point.

  Violence broke out in Tennessee, a massacre by the Indians, hangings and exile—standing there on the scaffold waiting, sixty of them. The Tuscaroras, forced to leave their country, were invited by the Six Nations to join them in Upper New York. The bucks went on ahead but some of the women and the stragglers got no further than the valley-cleft near Suffern. They took to the mountains there where they were joined by Hessian deserters from the British Army, a number of albinos among them, escaped negro slaves and a lot of women and their brats released in New York City after the British had been forced to leave. They had them in a pen there—picked up in Liverpool and elsewhere by a man named Jackson under contract with the British Government to provide women for the soldiers in America.

  The mixture ran in the woods and took the general name, Jackson’s Whites. (There had been some blacks also, mixed in, some West Indian negresses, a shipload, to replace the whites lost when their ship, one of six coming from England, had foundered in a storm at sea. He had to make it up somehow and that was the quickest and cheapest way.)

  New Barbadoes Neck, the region was called.

  Cromwell, in the middle of the seventeenth century, shipped some thousands of Irish women and children to the Barbadoes to be sold as slaves. Forced by their owners to mate with the others these unfortunates were succeeded by a few generations of Irish-speaking negroes and mulattos. And it is commonly asserted to this day the natives of Barbadoes speak with an Irish brogue.

  I remember

  a Geographic picture, the 9 women

  of some African chief semi-naked

  astraddle a log, an official log to

  be presumed, heads left:

  Foremost

  froze the young and latest,

  erect, a proud queen, conscious of her power,

  mud-caked, her monumental hair

  slanted above the brows—violently frowning.

  Behind her, packed tight up

  in a descending scale of freshness

  stiffened the others

  and then . .

  the last, the first wife,

  present! supporting all the rest growing

  up from her—whose careworn eyes

  serious, menacing—but unabashed; breasts

  sagging from hard use . .

  Whereas the uppointed breasts

  of that other, tense, charged with

  pressures unrelieved .

  and the rekindling they bespoke

  was evident.

  Not that the lightnings

  do not stab at the mystery of a man

  from both ends—and the middle, no matter

  how much a chief he may be, rather the more

  because of it, to destroy him at home .

  . . Womanlike, a vague smile,

  unattached, floating like a pigeon

  after a long flight to his cote.

  Mrs. Sarah Cumming, consort of the Rev. Hooper Cumming, of Newark, was a daughter of the late Mr. John Emmons, of Portland, in the district of Maine…. She had been married about two months, and was blessed with a flattering prospect of no common share of Temporal felicity and usefulness in the sphere which Providence had assigned her; but oh, how uncertain is the continuance of every earthly joy.

  On Saturday, the 20th of June, 1812, the Rev. Cumming rode with his wife to Paterson, in order to supply, by presbyterial appointment, a destitute congregation in that place, on the following day…. On Monday morning, he went with his beloved companion to show her the falls of the Passaic, and the surrounding beautiful, wild and romantic scenery,—little expecting the solemn event to ensue.

  Having ascended the flight of stairs (the Hundred Steps) Mr. and Mrs. Cumming walked over the solid ledge to the vicinity of the cataract, charmed with the wonderful prospect, and making various remarks upon the stupendous works of nature around them. At length they took their station on the brow of the solid rock, which overhangs the basin, six or eight rods from the falling water, where thousands have stood before, and where there is a fine view of the sublime curiosities of the place. When they had enjoyed the luxury of the scene for a considerable length of time, Mr. Cumming said, “My dear, I believe it is time for us to set our face homeward”; and at the same moment, turned round in order to lead the way. He instantly heard the voice of distress, looked back and his wife was gone!

  Mr. Cumming’s sensations on the distressing occasion may, in some measure, be conceived, but they cannot be described. He was on the borders of distraction, and, scarcely knowing what he did, would have plunged into the abyss, had it not been kindly ordered in providence that a young man should be near, who instantly flew to him, like a guardian angel, and held him from a step which his reason, at the time, could not have prevented. This young man led him from the precipice, and conducted him to the ground below the stairs. Mr. Cumming forced himself out of the hands of his protector, and ran with violence, in order to leap into the fatal flood. His young friend, however, caught him once more…. Immediate search was made, and diligently continued throughout the day, for the body of Mrs. Cumming; but to no purpose. On the following morning, her mortal part was found in a depth of 42 feet, and, the same day, was conveyed to Newark.

  A false language. A true. A false language pouring—a

  language (misunderstood) pouring (misinterpreted) without

  dignity, without minister, crashing upon a s
tone ear. At least

  it settled it for her. Patch too, as a matter of fact. He

  became a national hero in ’28, ’29 and toured the country

  diving from cliffs and masts, rocks and bridges—to prove his

  thesis: Some things can be done as well as others.

  THE GRRRREAT HISTORY of that

  old time Jersey Patriot

  N. F. P A T E R S O N !

  (N for Noah; F for Faitoute; P for short)

  “Jersey Lightning” to the boys.

  So far everything had gone smoothly. The pulley and ropes were securely fastened on each side of the chasm, and everything made in readiness to pull the clumsy bridge into position. It was a wooden structure boarded up on both sides, and a roof. It was about two o’clock in the afternoon and a large crowd had gathered—a large crowd for that time, as the town only numbered about four thousand—to watch the bridge placed in position.

  That day was a great day for old Paterson. It being Saturday, the mills were shut down, so to give the people a chance to celebrate. Among those who came in for a good part of the celebration was Sam Patch, then a resident in Paterson, who was a boss over cotton spinners in one of the mills. He was my boss, and many a time he gave me a cuff over the ears.

  Well, this day the constables were on the look for Patch, because they thought he would be on a spree and cause trouble. Patch had declared so frequently that he would jump from the rocks that he was placed under arrest at various times. He had previously been locked up in the basement under the bank with a bad case of delirium tremens, but on the day the bridge was pulled across the chasm he was let out. Some thought he was crazy. They were not far wrong.

  But the happiest man in the town that day was Timothy B. Crane, who had charge of the bridge. Tim Crane was a hotel keeper and kept a tavern on the Manchester side of the Falls. His place was a great resort for circus men. Such famous circus men of the long ago as Dan Rice and James Cooke, the great bareback rider, visited him.

  Tim Crane built the bridge because his rival, Fyfield, who kept the tavern on the other side of the falls, was getting the benefit of the “Jacob’s Ladder,” as it was sometimes called—the “hundred steps,” a long, rustic, winding stairs in the gorge leading to the opposite side of the river—it making his place more easy to get to…. Crane was a very robust man over six feet tall. He wore side whiskers. He was well known to the other citizens as a man of much energy and no little ability. In his manner he resembled the large, rugged stature of Sam Patch.