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Paterson (Revised Edition)

Page 9

by William Carlos Williams


  in June

  lean among flowers

  sweet and white at

  heavy cost

  A cool of books

  will sometimes lead the mind to libraries

  of a hot afternoon, if books can be found

  cool to the sense to lead the mind away.

  For there is a wind or ghost of a wind

  in all books echoing the life

  there, a high wind that fills the tubes

  of the ear until we think we hear a wind,

  actual .

  to lead the mind away.

  Drawn from the streets we break off

  our minds’ seclusion and are taken up by

  the books’ winds, seeking, seeking

  down the wind

  until we are unaware which is the wind and

  which the wind’s power over us .

  to lead the mind away

  and there grows in the mind

  a scent, it may be, of locust blossoms

  whose perfume is itself a wind moving

  to lead the mind away

  through which, below the cataract

  soon to be dry

  the river whirls and eddys

  first recollected.

  Spent from wandering the useless

  streets these months, faces folded against

  him like clover at nightfall, something

  has brought him back to his own

  mind .

  in which a falls unseen

  tumbles and rights itself

  and refalls—and does not cease, falling

  and refalling with a roar, a reverberation

  not of the falls but of its rumor

  unabated

  Beautiful thing,

  my dove, unable and all who are windblown,

  touched by the fire

  and unable,

  a roar that (soundless) drowns the sense

  with its reiteration

  unwilling to lie in its bed

  and sleep and sleep, sleep

  in its dark bed.

  Summer! it is summer .

  —and still the roar in his mind is

  unabated

  The last wolf was killed near the Weisse Huis in the year 1723

  Books will give rest sometimes against

  the uproar of water falling

  and righting itself to refall filling

  the mind with its reverberation

  shaking stone.

  Blow! So be it. Bring down! So be it. Consume

  and submerge! So be it. Cyclone, fire

  and flood. So be it. Hell, New Jersey, it said

  on the letter. Delivered without comment.

  So be it!

  Run from it, if you will. So be it.

  (Winds that enshroud us in their folds—

  or no wind). So be it. Pull at the doors, of a hot

  afternoon, doors that the wind holds, wrenches

  from our arms — and hands. So be it. The Library

  is sanctuary to our fears. So be it. So be it.

  — the wind that has tripped us, pressed upon

  us, prurient or upon the prurience of our fears

  — laughter fading. So be it.

  Sit breathless

  or still breathless. So be it. Then, eased

  turn to the task. So be it :

  Old newspaper files,

  to find — a child burned in a field,

  no language. Tried, aflame, to crawl under

  a fence to go home. So be it. Two others,

  boy and girl, clasped in each other’s arms

  (clasped also by the water) So be it. Drowned

  wordless in the canal. So be it. The Paterson

  Cricket Club, 1896. A woman lobbyist. So

  be it. Two local millionaires — moved away.

  So be it. Another Indian rock shelter

  found — a bone awl. So be it. The

  old Rogers Locomotive Works. So be it.

  Shield us from loneliness. So be it. The mind

  reels, starts back amazed from the reading .

  So be it.

  He turns: over his right shoulder

  a vague outline, speaking .

  Gently!Gently!

  as in all things an opposite

  that awakes

  the fury, conceiving

  knowledge

  by way of despair that has

  no place

  to lay its glossy head—

  Save only—not alone!

  Never, if possible

  alone! to escape the accepted

  chopping block

  and a square hat! .

  The “Castle” too to be razed. So be it. For no

  reason other than that it is there, in-

  comprehensible; of no USE! So be it. So be it.

  Lambert, the poor English boy,

  the immigrant, who built it

  was the first

  to oppose the unions:

  This is MY shop. I reserve the right (and he did)

  to walk down the row (between his looms) and

  fire any son-of-a-bitch I choose without excuse

  or reason more than that I don’t like his face.

  Rose and I didn’t know each other when we both went to the Paterson strike around the first war and worked in the Pagent. She went regularly to feed Jack Reed in jail and I listened to Big Bill Haywood, Gurley Flynn and the rest of the big hearts and helping hands in Union Hall. And look at the damned thing now.

  They broke him all right .

  —the old boy himself, a Limey,

  his head full of castles, the pivots of that

  curt dialectic (while it lasted), built himself a

  Balmoral on the alluvial silt, the rock-fall skirt-

  ing the volcanic upthrust of the “Mountain”

  —some of the windows

  of the main house illuminated by translucent

  laminae of planed pebbles (his first wife

  admired them) by far the most authentic detail

  of the place; at least the best

  to be had there and the best artifact .

  The province of the poem is the world.

  When the sun rises, it rises in the poem

  and when it sets darkness comes down and

  the poem is dark .

  and lamps are lit, cats prowl and men

  read, read—or mumble and stare

  at that which their small lights distinguish

  or obscure or their hands search out

  in the dark. The poem moves them or

  it does not move them. Faitoute, his ears

  ringing . no sound . no great city,

  as he seems to read —

  a roar of books

  from the wadded library oppresses him

  until

  his mind begins to drift .

  Beautiful thing:

  — a dark flame,

  a wind, a flood—counter to all staleness.

  Dead men’s dreams, confined by these walls, risen,

  seek an outlet. The spirit languishes,

  unable, unable not from lack of innate ability —

  (barring alone sure death)

  but from that which immures them pressed here

  together with their fellows, for respite .

  Flown in from before the cold or nightbound

  (the light attracted them)

  they sought safety (in books)

  but ended battering against glass

  at the high windows

  The Library is desolation, it has a smell of its own

  of stagnation and death .

  Beautiful Thing!

  —the cost of dreams.

  in which we search, after a surgery

  of the wits and must translate, quickly

  step by step or be destroyed—under a spell

  to remain a castrate (a slowly descending veil

  closing about the mind

&
nbsp; cutting the mind away) .

  SILENCE!

  Awake, he dozes in a fever heat,

  cheeks burning . . loaning blood

  to the past, amazed . risking life.

  And as his mind fades, joining the others, he

  seeks to bring it back—but it

  eludes him, flutters again and flies off and

  again away .

  O Thalassa, Thalassa!

  the lash and hiss of water

  The sea!

  How near it was to them!

  Soon!

  Too soon .

  —and still he brings it back, battering

  with the rest against the vents and high windows

  (They do not yield but shriek

  as furies,

  shriek and execrate the imagination, the impotent,

  a woman against a woman, seeking to destroy

  it but cannot, the life will not out of it) .

  A library — of books! decrying all books

  that enfeeble the mind’s intent

  Beautiful thing!

  The Indians were accused of killing two or three pigs—this was untrue, as afterward proved, because the pigs had been butchered by the white men themselves. The following incident is concerned with two of the Indians who had been captured by Kieft’s soldiers because of the accusations: The braves had been turned over to the soldiers, by Kieft, to do with as they pleased.

  The first of these savages, having received a frightful wound, desired them to permit him to dance the Kinte Kaye, a religious use among them before death; he received, however, so many wounds that he dropped dead. The soldiers then cut strips down the other’s body…. While this was going forward Director Kieft, with his Councillor (the first trained physician in the colony) Jan de la Montagne, a Frenchman, stood laughing heartily at the fun, and rubbing his right arm, so much delight he took in such scenes. He then ordered him (the brave) to be taken out of the fort, and the soldiers bringing him to the Beaver’s Path, he dancing the Kinte Kaye all the time, mutilated him, and at last cut off his head.

  There stood at the same time, 24 or 25 female savages, who had been taken prisoners, at the north-west corner of the fort: they held up their arms, and in their language exclaimed. “For shame! for shame! such unheard of cruelty was never known, or even thought of, among us.”

  They made money of sea-shells. Bird feathers. Beaver skins. When a priest died and was buried they encased him with such wealth as he possessed. The Dutch dug up the body, stole the furs and left the carcass to the wolves that roamed the woods.

  Doc, listen — fiftyish, a grimy hand

  pushing back the cap: In gold —

  Volunteers of America

  I got

  a woman outside I want to marry, will

  you give her a blood test?

  From 1869 to 1879 several crossed the falls on a tight rope (in the old pictures the crowd, below, on the dry rocks in their short sleeves and summer dresses look more like water-lilies or penguins than men and women staring up at them): De Lave, Harry Leslie and Geo. Dobbs—the last carrying a boy upon his shoulders. Fleetwood Miles, a semi-lunatic, announced that he too would perform the feat but could not be found when the crowd had assembled.

  The place sweats of staleness and of rot

  a back-house stench . a

  library stench

  It is summer! stinking summer

  Escape from it—but not by running

  away. Not by “composition.” Embrace the

  foulness

  —the being taut, balanced between

  eternities

  A spectator on Morris Mountain, when Leslie had gone out with a cookstove strapped to his back—tugged at one of the guy-ropes, either out of malice or idleness, so that he almost fell off. Having carried the stove to the center of the rope he kindled a fire in it, cooked an omelet and ate it. It rained that night so that the later performance had to be postponed.

  But on Monday he did the Washerwoman’s Frolic, in female attire, staggering drunkenly across the chasm, going backward, hopping on one foot and at the rope’s center lay down on his side. He retired after that having “busted” his tights—to the cottage above for repairs.

  The progress of the events was transmitted over the new telephone to the city from the tower of the water works. The boy, Tommy Walker, was the real hero of these adventures.

  And as reverie gains and

  your joints loosen

  the trick’s done!

  Day is covered and we see you—

  but not alone!

  drunk and bedraggled to release

  the strictness of beauty

  under a sky full of stars

  Beautiful thing

  and a slow moon —

  The car

  had stopped long since

  when the others

  came and dragged those out

  who had you there

  indifferent

  to whatever the anesthetic

  Beautiful Thing

  might slum away the bars—

  Reek of it!

  What does it matter?

  could set free

  only the one thing—

  But you!

  —in your white lace dress

  . . .

  Haunted by your beauty (I said),

  exalted and not easily to be attained, the

  whole scene is haunted:

  Take off your clothes,

  (I said)

  Haunted, the quietness of your face

  is a quietness, real

  out of no book.

  Your clothes (I said) quickly, while

  your beauty is attainable.

  Put them on the chair

  (I said. Then in a fury, for which I am

  ashamed)

  You smell as though you need

  a bath. Take off your clothes and purify

  yourself . .

  And let me purify myself

  —to look at you,

  to look at you (I said)

  (Then, my anger rising) TAKE OFF YOUR

  CLOTHES! I didn’t ask you

  to take off your skin . I said your

  clothes, your clothes. You smell

  like a whore. I ask you to bathe in my

  opinions, the astonishing virtue of your

  lost body (I said) .

  —that you might

  send me hurtling to the moon

  . . let me look at you (I

  said, weeping)

  Let’s take a ride around, to see what the town looks like .

  Indifferent, the indifference of certain death

  or incident upon certain death

  propounds a riddle (in the Joyceian mode—

  or otherwise,

  it is indifferent which)

  A marriage riddle:

  So much talk of the language—when there are no

  ears.

  . . . . . . . .

  What is there to say? save that

  beauty is unheeded . tho’ for sale and

  bought glibly enough

  But it is true, they fear

  it more than death, beauty is feared

  more than death, more than they fear death

  Beautiful thing

  —and marry only to destroy, in private, in

  their privacy only to destroy, to hide

  (in marriage)

  that they may destroy and not be perceived

  in it—the destroying

  Death will be too late to bring us aid .

  What end but love, that stares death in the eye?

  A city, a marriage — that stares death

  in the eye

  The riddle of a man and a woman

  For what is there but love, that stares death

  in the eye, love, begetting marriage —

  not infamy, not death

  tho’ love seem to beget

  only death in the old plays, only death, it is<
br />
  as tho’ they wished death rather than to face

  infamy, the infamy of old cities .

  . . . a world of corrupt cities,

  nothing else, that death stares in the eye,

  lacking love: no palaces, no secluded gardens,

  no water among the stones; the stone rails

  of the balustrades, scooped out, running with

  clear water, no peace .

  The waters

  are dry. It is summer, it is . ended

  Sing me a song to make death tolerable, a song

  of a man and a woman: the riddle of a man

  and a woman.

  What language could allay our thirsts,

  what winds lift us, what floods bear us

  past defeats

  but song but deathless song?

  The rock

  married to the river

  makes

  no sound

  And the river

  passes—but I remain

  clamant

  calling out ceaselessly

  to the birds

  and clouds

  (listening)

  Who am I?

  —the voice!

  —the voice rises, neglected

  (with its new) the unfaltering

  language. Is there no release?

  Give it up. Quit it. Stop writing.

  “Saintlike” you will never

  separate that stain of sense,

  an offense

  to love, the mind’s worm eating

  out the core, unappeased

  —never separate that stain

  of sense from the inert mass. Never.

  Never that radiance

  quartered apart,

  unapproached by symbols .

  Doctor, do you believe in

  “the people,” the Democracy? Do

  you still believe — in this

  swill-hole of corrupt cities?

  Do you, Doctor? Now?

  Give up

  the poem. Give up the shilly-

  shally of art.

  What can you, what

  can YOU hope to conclude —

  on a heap of dirty linen?

  — you

  a poet (ridded) from Paradise?

  Is it a dirty book? I’ll bet

  it’s a dirty book, she said.

  Death lies in wait,

  a kindly brother —

  full of the missing words,

  the words that never get said—

  a kindly brother to the poor.

  The radiant gist that

  resists the final crystallization

  . in the pitch-blend

  the radiant gist .

  There was an earlier day, of prismatic colors : whence to New Barbadoes came the Englishman .

  Thus it began .

  Certainly there is no mystery to the fact

  that COSTS SPIRAL ACCORDING TO A REBUS—known

  or unknown, plotted or automatic. The fact

  of poverty is not a matter of argument. Language

 

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