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Selected Poems

Page 10

by William Carlos Williams


  The canary, I said, comes and sits

  on our table in the morning

  at breakfast, I mean walks about

  on the table with us there

  and pecks at the table-cloth

  He must

  be a smart little bird

  Good-bye!

  The Desert Music and Other Poems

  (1954)

  To Bill and Paul

  To Daphne and Virginia

  The smell of the heat is boxwood

  when rousing us

  a movement of the air

  stirs our thoughts

  that had no life in them

  to a life, a life in which

  two women agonize:

  to live and to breathe is no less.

  Two young women.

  The box odor

  is the odor of that of which

  partaking separately,

  each to herself

  I partake also

  . . separately.

  Be patient that I address you in a poem,

  there is no other

  fit medium.

  The mind

  lives there. It is uncertain,

  can trick us and leave us

  agonized. But for resources

  what can equal it?

  There is nothing. We

  should be lost

  without its wings to

  fly off upon.

  The mind is the cause of our distresses

  but of it we can build anew.

  Oh something more than

  it flies off to:

  a woman’s world,

  of crossed sticks, stopping

  thought. A new world

  is only a new mind.

  And the mind and the poem

  are all apiece.

  Two young women

  to be snared,

  odor of box,

  to bind and hold them

  for the mind’s labors.

  All women are fated similarly

  facing men

  and there is always

  another, such as I,

  who loves them,

  loves all women, but

  finds himself, touching them,

  like other men,

  often confused.

  I have two sons,

  the husbands of these women,

  who live also

  in a world of love,

  apart.

  Shall this odor of box in

  the heat

  not also touch them

  fronting a world of women

  from which they are

  debarred

  by the very scents which draw them on

  against easy access?

  In our family we stammer unless,

  half mad,

  we come to speech at last

  And I am not

  a young man.

  My love encumbers me.

  It is a love

  less than

  a young man’s love but,

  like this box odor

  more penetrant, infinitely

  more penetrant,

  in that sense not to be resisted.

  There is, in the hard

  give and take

  of a man’s life with

  a woman

  a thing which is not the stress itself

  but beyond

  and above

  that,

  something that wants to rise

  and shake itself

  free. We are not chickadees

  on a bare limb

  with a worm in the mouth.

  The worm is in our brains

  and concerns them

  and not food for our

  offspring, wants to disrupt

  our thought

  and throw it

  to the newspapers

  or anywhere.

  There is, in short,

  a counter stress,

  born of the sexual shock,

  which survives it

  consonant with the moon,

  to keep its own mind.

  There is, of course,

  more.

  Women

  are not alone

  in that. At least

  while this healing odor is abroad

  one can write a poem.

  Staying here in the country

  on an old farm

  we eat our breakfasts

  on a balcony under an elm.

  The shrubs below us

  are neglected. And

  there, penned in,

  or he would eat the garden,

  lives a pet goose who

  tilts his head

  sidewise

  and looks up at us,

  a very quiet old fellow

  who writes no poems.

  Fine mornings we sit there

  while birds

  come and go.

  A pair of robins

  is building a nest

  for the second time

  this season. Men

  against their reason

  speak of love, sometimes,

  when they are old. It is

  all they can do .

  or watch a heavy goose

  who waddles, slopping

  noisily in the mud of

  his pool.

  The Orchestra

  The precise counterpart

  of a cacophony of bird calls

  lifting the sun almighty

  into his sphere: wood-winds

  clarinet and violins

  sound a prolonged A!

  Ah! the sun, the sun! is about to rise

  and shed his beams

  as he has always done

  upon us all,

  drudges and those

  who live at ease,

  women and men,

  upon the old,

  upon children and the sick

  who are about to die and are indeed

  dead in their beds,

  to whom his light

  is forever lost. The cello

  raises his bass note

  manfully in the treble din:

  Ah, ah and ah!

  together, unattuned

  seeking a common tone.

  Love is that common tone

  shall raise his fiery head

  and sound his note.

  The purpose of an orchestra

  is to organize those sounds

  and hold them

  to an assembled order

  in spite of the

  “wrong note.” Well, shall we

  think or listen? Is there a sound addressed

  not wholly to the ear?

  We half close

  our eyes. We do not

  hear it through our eyes.

  It is not

  a flute note either, it is the relation

  of a flute note

  to a drum. I am wide

  awake. The mind

  is listening. The ear

  is alerted. But the ear

  in a half-reluctant mood

  stretches

  . . and yawns.

  And so the banked violins

  in three tiers

  enliven the scene,

  pizzicato. For a short

  memory or to

  make the listener listen

  the theme is repeated

  stressing a variant:

  it is a principle of music

  to repeat the theme. Repeat

  and repeat again,

  as the pace mounts. The

  theme is difficult

  but no more difficult

  than the facts to be

  resolved. Repeat

  and repeat the theme

  and all it develops to be

  until thought is dissolved

  in tears.

  Our dreams

  have been assaulted

  by a memory that will not

  sleep. The

  French hornsr />
  interpose

  . . their voices:

  I love you. My heart

  is innocent. And this

  the first day of the world!

  Say to them:

  “Man has survived hitherto because he was too ignorant

  to know how to realize his wishes. Now that he can realize

  them, he must either change them or perish.”

  Now is the time

  in spite of the “wrong note”

  I love you. My heart is

  innocent.

  And this the first

  (and last) day of the world

  The birds twitter now anew

  but a design

  surmounts their twittering.

  It is a design of a man

  that makes them twitter.

  It is a design.

  The Host

  According to their need,

  this tall Negro evangelist

  (at a table separate from the

  rest of his party);

  these two young Irish nuns

  (to be described subsequently);

  and this white-haired Anglican

  have come witlessly

  to partake of the host

  laid for them (and for me)

  by the tired waitresses.

  It is all

  (since eat we must)

  made sacred by our common need.

  The evangelist’s assistants

  are most open in their praise

  though covert

  as would be seemly

  in such a public

  place. The nuns

  are all black, a side view.

  The cleric,

  his head bowed to reveal

  his unruly poll

  dines alone.

  My eyes are restless.

  The evangelists eat well,

  fried oysters and what not

  at this railway restaurant. The Sisters

  are soon satisfied. One

  on leaving,

  looking straight before her under steadfast brows,

  reveals

  blue eyes. I myself

  have brown eyes

  and a milder mouth.

  There is nothing to eat,

  seek it where you will,

  but of the body of the Lord.

  The blessed plants

  and the sea, yield it

  to the imagination

  intact. And by that force

  it becomes real,

  bitterly

  to the poor animals

  who suffer and die

  that we may live.

  The well-fed evangels,

  the narrow-lipped and bright-eyed nuns,

  the tall,

  white-haired Anglican,

  proclaim it by their appetites

  as do I also,

  chomping with my worn-out teeth:

  the Lord is my shepherd

  I shall not want.

  No matter how well they are fed,

  how daintily

  they put the food to their lips,

  it is all

  according to the imagination!

  Only the imagination

  is real! They have imagined it,

  therefore it is so:

  of the evangels,

  with the long legs characteristic of the race—

  only the docile women

  of the party smiled at me

  when, with my eyes

  I accosted them.

  The nuns—but after all

  I saw only a face, a young face

  cut off at the brows.

  It was a simple story.

  The cleric, plainly

  from a good school,

  interested me more,

  a man with whom I might

  carry on a conversation.

  No one was there

  save only for

  the food. Which I alone,

  being a poet,

  could have given them.

  But I

  had only my eyes

  with which to speak.

  Journey to Love

  (1955)

  For My Wife

  The lvy Crown

  The whole process is a lie,

  unless,

  crowned by excess,

  it break forcefully,

  one way or another,

  from its confinement—

  or find a deeper well.

  Antony and Cleopatra

  were right;

  they have shown

  the way. I love you

  or I do not live

  at all.

  Daffodil time

  is past. This is

  summer, summer!

  the heart says,

  and not even the full of it.

  No doubts

  are permitted—

  though they will come

  and may

  before our time

  overwhelm us.

  We are only mortal

  but being mortal

  can defy our fate.

  We may

  by an outside chance

  even win! We do not

  look to see

  jonquils and violets

  come again

  but there are,

  still,

  the roses!

  Romance has no part in it.

  The business of love is

  cruelty which,

  by our wills,

  we transform

  to live together.

  It has its seasons,

  for and against,

  whatever the heart

  fumbles in the dark

  to assert

  toward the end of May.

  Just as the nature of briars

  is to tear flesh,

  I have proceeded

  through them.

  Keep

  the briars out,

  they say.

  You cannot live

  and keep free of

  briars.

  Children pick flowers.

  Let them.

  Though having them

  in hand

  they have no further use for them

  but leave them crumpled

  at the curb’s edge.

  At our age the imagination

  across the sorry facts

  lifts us

  to make roses

  stand before thorns.

  Sure

  love is cruel

  and selfish

  and totally obtuse—

  at least, blinded by the light,

  young love is.

  But we are older,

  I to love

  and you to be loved,

  we have,

  no matter how,

  by our wills survived

  to keep

  the jeweled prize

  always

  at our finger tips.

  We will it so

  and so it is

  past all accident.

  The Sparrow

  (To My Father)

  This sparrow

  who comes to sit at my window

  is a poetic truth

  more than a natural one.

  His voice,

  his movements,

  his habits—

  how he loves to

  flutter his wings

  in the dust—

  all attest it;

  granted, he does it

  to rid himself of lice

  but the relief he feels

  makes him

  cry out lustily—

  which is a trait

  more related to music

  than otherwise.

  Wherever he finds himself

  in early spring,

  on back streets

  or beside palaces,

  he carries on

  unaffectedly

  his amours.

  It begins in the egg,
/>   his sex genders it:

  What is more pretentiously

  useless

  or about which

  we more pride ourselves?

  It leads as often as not

  to our undoing.

  The cockerel, the crow

  with their challenging voices

  cannot surpass

  the insistence

  of his cheep!

  Once

  at El Paso

  toward evening,

  I saw—and heard!—

  ten thousand sparrows

  who had come in from

  the desert

  to roost. They filled the trees

  of a small park. Men fled

  (with ears ringing!)

  from their droppings,

  leaving the premises

  to the alligators

  who inhabit

  the fountain. His image

  is familiar

  as that of the aristocratic

  unicorn, a pity

  there are not more oats eaten

  nowadays

  to make living easier

  for him.

  At that,

  his small size,

  keen eyes,

  serviceable beak

  and general truculence

  assure his survival—

  to say nothing

  of his innumerable

  brood.

  Even the Japanese

  know him

  and have painted him

  sympathetically,

  with profound insight

  into his minor

  characteristics.

  Nothing even remotely

  subtle

  about his lovemaking.

  He crouches

  before the female,

  drags his wings,

  waltzing,

  throws back his head

  and simply—

  yells! The din

  is terrific.

  The way he swipes his bill

  across a plank

  to clean it,

  is decisive.

  So with everything

  he does. His coppery

  eyebrows

  give him the air

  of being always

  a winner—and yet

  I saw once,

  the female of his species

  clinging determinedly

  to the edge of

  a water pipe,

  catch him

  by his crown-feathers

  to hold him

  silent,

  subdued,

  hanging above the city streets

  until

  she was through with him.

  What was the use

  of that?

  She hung there

  herself,

  puzzled at her success.

  I laughed heartily.

  Practical to the end,

  it is the poem

  of his existence

  that triumphed

  finally;

  a wisp of feathers

  flattened to the pavement,

  wings spread symmetrically

  as if in flight,

  the head gone,

  the black escutcheon of the breast

  undecipherable,

  an effigy of a sparrow,

  a dried wafer only,

  left to say

  and it says it

  without offense,

 

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