Book Read Free

Selected Poems

Page 14

by William Carlos Williams


  —his mind a red stone carved to be

  endless flight .

  Love that is a stone endlessly in flight,

  so long as stone shall last bearing

  the chisel’s stroke .

  and is lost and covered

  with ash, falls from an undermined bank

  and— begins churring!

  AND DOES, the stone after the life!

  The stone lives, the flesh dies

  —we know nothing of death.

  —boot long

  window-eyes that front the whole head,

  Red stone! as if

  a light still clung in them .

  Love

  combating sleep

  ______________

  the sleep

  piecemeal

  Shortly after midnight, August 20, 1878, special officer Good-ridge, when, in front of the Franklin House, heard a strange squealing noise down towards Ellison Street. Running to see what was the matter, he found a cat at bay under the water table at Clark’s hardware store on the corner, confronting a strange black animal too small to be a cat and entirely too large for a rat. The officer ran up to the spot and the animal got in under the grating of the cellar window, from which it frequently poked its head with a lightning rapidity. Mr. Goodridge made several strikes at it with his club but was unable to hit it. Then officer Keyes came along and as soon as he saw it, he said it was a mink, which confirmed the theory that Mr. Goodridge had already formed. Both tried for a while to hit it with their clubs but were unable to do so, when finally officer Goodridge drew his pistol and fired a shot at the animal. The shot evidently missed its mark, but the noise and powder so frightened the little joker that it jumped out into the street, and made down into Ellison Street at a wonderful gait, closely followed by the two officers. The mink finally disappeared down a cellar window under the grocery store below Spanger-macher’s lager beer saloon, and that was the last seen of it. The cellar was examined again in the morning, but nothing further could be discovered of the little critter that had caused so much fun.

  Without invention nothing is well spaced,

  unless the mind change, unless

  the stars are new measured, according

  to their relative positions, the

  line will not change, the necessity

  will not matriculate: unless there is

  a new mind there cannot be a new

  line, the old will go on

  repeating itself with recurring

  deadliness: without invention

  nothing lies under the witch-hazel

  bush, the alder does not grow from among

  the hummocks margining the all

  but spent channel of the old swale,

  the small foot-prints

  of the mice under the overhanging

  tufts of the bunch-grass will not

  appear: without invention the line

  will never again take on its ancient

  divisions when the word, a supple word,

  lived in it, crumbled now to chalk.

  Under the bush they lie protected

  from the offending sun—

  11 o’clock

  They seem to talk

  —a park, devoted to pleasure : devoted to . grasshoppers

  3 colored girls, of age! stroll by

  —their color flagrant,

  their voices vagrant

  their laughter wild, flagellant, dissociated

  from the fixed scene .

  But the white girl, her head

  upon an arm, a butt between her fingers

  lies under the bush . .

  Semi-naked, facing her, a sunshade

  over his eyes,

  he talks with her

  —the jalopy half hid

  behind them in the trees—

  I bought a new bathing suit, just

  pants and a brassier :

  the breasts and

  the pudenda covered—beneath

  the sun in frank vulgarity.

  Minds beaten thin

  by waste—among

  the working classes SOME sort

  of breakdown

  has occurred. Semi-roused

  they lie upon their blanket

  face to face,

  mottled by the shadows of the leaves

  upon them, unannoyed,

  at least here unchallenged.

  Not undignified. . .

  talking, flagrant beyond all talk

  in perfect domesticity—

  And having bathed

  and having eaten (a few

  sandwiches)

  their pitiful thoughts do meet

  in the flesh—surrounded

  by churring loves! Gay wings

  to bear them (in sleep)

  —their thoughts alight,

  away

  . . among the grass

  Walking—

  across the old swale—a dry wave in the ground

  tho’ marked still by the line of Indian alders

  . . they (the Indians) would weave

  in and out, unseen, among them along the stream

  . come out whooping between the log

  house and men working the field, cut them

  off! they having left their arms in the block-

  house, and—without defense—carry them away

  in captivity. One old man .

  Forget it! for God’s sake, Cut

  out that stuff .

  Walking—

  he rejoins the path and sees, on a treeless

  knoll—the red path choking it—

  a stone wall, a sort of circular

  redoubt against the sky, barren and

  unoccupied. Mount. Why not?

  A chipmunk,

  with tail erect, scampers among the stones.

  (Thus the mind grows, up flinty pinnacles)

  but as he leans, in his stride,

  at sight of a flint arrow-head

  (it is not)

  —there

  in the distance, to the north, appear

  to him the chronic hills

  Well, so they are.

  He stops short:

  Who’s here?

  To a stone bench, to which she’s leashed,

  within the wall a man in tweeds—a pipe hooked in his jaw—is combing out a new-washed Collie bitch. The deliberate comb-strokes part the long hair—even her face he combs though her legs tremble slightly—until it lies, as he designs, like ripples in white sand giving off its clean-dog odor. The floor, stone slabs, she stands patiently before his caresses in that bare “sea chamber”

  to the right

  from this vantage, the observation tower

  in the middle distance stands up prominently

  from its pubic grove

  DEAR B. Please excuse me for not having told you this when I was over to your house. I had no courage to answer your questions so I’ll write it. Your dog is going to have puppies although I prayed she would be okey. It wasn’t that she was left alone as she never was but I used to let her out at dinner time while I hung up my clothes. At the time, it was on a Thursday, my mother-in-law had some sheets and table cloths out on the end of the line. I figured the dogs wouldn’t come as long as I was there and none came thru my yard or near the apartment. He must have come between your hedge and the house. Every few seconds I would run to the end of the line or peck under the sheets to see if Musty was alright. She was until I looked a minute too late. I took sticks and stones after the dog but he wouldn’t beat it. George gave me plenty of hell and I started praying that I had frightened the other dog so much that nothing had happened. I know you’ll be cursing like a son-of-a-gun and probably won’t ever speak to me again for not having told you. Don’t think I haven’t been worrying about Musty. She’s occupied my mind every day since that awful event. You won’t think so highly of me now and feel like protecting me. Instead I’ll bet you could kill …

  And still the picnick
ers come on, now

  early afternoon, and scatter through the

  trees over the fenced-in acres .

  Voices!

  multiple and inarticulate . voices

  clattering loudly to the sun, to

  the clouds. Voices!

  assaulting the air gaily from all sides.

  —among which the ear strains to catch

  the movement of one voice among the rest

  —a reed-like voice

  of peculiar accent

  Thus she finds what peace there is, reclines,

  before his approach, stroked

  by their clambering feet—for pleasure

  It is all for

  pleasure . their feet . aimlessly

  wandering

  The “great beast” come to sun himself

  as he may

  . . their dreams mingling,

  aloof

  Let us be reasonable!

  Sunday in the park,

  limited by the escarpment, eastward; to

  the west abutting on the old road: recreation

  with a view! the binoculars chained

  to anchored stanchions along the east wall—

  beyond which, a hawk

  soars!

  —a trumpet sounds fitfully.

  Stand at the rampart (use a metronome

  if your ear is deficient, one made in Hungary

  if you prefer)

  and look away north by east where the church

  spires still spend their wits against

  the sky to the ball-park

  in the hollow with its minute figures running

  —beyond the gap where the river

  plunges into the narrow gorge, unseen

  —and the imagination soars, as a voice

  beckons, a thundrous voice, endless

  —as sleep: the voice

  that has ineluctably called them—

  that unmoving roar!

  churches and factories

  (at a price)

  together, summoned them from the pit .

  —his voice, one among many (unheard)

  moving under all.

  The mountain quivers.

  Time! Count! Sever and mark time!

  So during the early afternoon, from place

  to place he moves,

  his voice mingling with other voices

  —the voice in his voice

  opening his old throat, blowing out his lips,

  kindling his mind (more

  than his mind will kindle)

  —following the hikers.

  At last he comes to the idlers’ favorite

  haunts, the picturesque summit, where

  the blue-stone (rust-red where exposed)

  has been faulted at various levels

  (ferns rife among the stones)

  into rough terraces and partly closed in

  dens of sweet grass, the ground gently sloping.

  Loiterers in groups straggle

  over the bare rock-table—scratched by their

  boot-nails more than the glacier scratched

  them—walking indifferent through

  each other’s privacy .

  —in any case,

  the center of movement, the core of gaiety.

  Here a young man, perhaps sixteen,

  is sitting with his back to the rock among

  some ferns playing a guitar, dead pan .

  The rest are eating and drinking.

  The big guy

  in the black hat is too full to move

  but Mary

  is up!

  Come on! Wassa ma’? You got

  broken leg?

  It is this air!

  the air of the Midi

  and the old cultures intoxicates them:

  present!

  —lifts one arm holding the cymbals

  of her thoughts, cocks her old head

  and dances! raising her skirts:

  La la la la!

  What a bunch of bums! Afraid somebody see

  you?

  Blah!

  Escrementi!

  —she spits.

  Look a’ me, Grandma! Everybody too damn

  lazy.

  This is the old, the very old, old upon old,

  the undying: even to the minute gestures,

  the hand holding the cup, the wine

  spilling, the arm stained by it:

  Remember

  the peon in the lost

  Eisenstein film drinking

  from a wine-skin with the abandon

  of a horse drinking

  so that it slopped down his chin?

  down his neck, dribbling

  over his shirt-front and down

  onto his pants—laughing, toothless?

  Heavenly man!

  —the leg raised, verisimilitude .

  even to the coarse contours of the leg, the

  bovine touch! The leer, the cave of it,

  the female of it facing the male, the satyr—

  (Priapus!)

  with that lonely implication, goatherd

  and goat, fertility, the attack, drunk,

  cleansed .

  Rejected. Even the film

  suppressed : but . persistent

  The picnickers laugh on the rocks celebrating

  the varied Sunday of their loves with

  its declining light—

  Walking—

  look down (from a ledge) into this grassy

  den

  (somewhat removed from the traffic)

  above whose brows

  a moon! where she lies sweating at his side:

  She stirs, distraught,

  against him—wounded (drunk), moves

  against him (a lump) desiring,

  against him, bored .

  flagrantly bored and sleeping, a

  beer bottle still grasped spear-like

  in his hand .

  while the small, sleepless boys, who

  have climbed the columnar rocks

  overhanging the pair (where they lie

  overt upon the grass, besieged—

  careless in their narrow cell under

  the crowd’s feet) stare down,

  from history!

  at them, puzzled and in the sexless

  light (of childhood) bored equally,

  go charging off .

  There where

  the movement throbs openly

  and you can hear the Evangelist shouting!

  —moving nearer

  she—lean as a goat—leans

  her lean belly to the man’s backside

  toying with the clips of his

  suspenders .

  —to which he adds his useless voice:

  until there moves in his sleep

  a music that is whole, unequivocal (in

  his sleep, sweating in his sleep—laboring

  against sleep, agasp!)

  —and does not waken.

  Sees, alive (asleep)

  —the fall’s roar entering

  his sleep (to be fulfilled)

  reborn

  in his sleep—scattered over the mountain

  severally .

  —by which he woos her, severally.

  And the amnesic crowd (the scattered),

  called about— strains

  to catch the movement of one voice .

  hears,

  Pleasure! Pleasure!

  —feels,

  half dismayed, the afternoon of complex

  voices its own—

  and is relieved

  (relived)

  A cop is directing traffic

  across the main road up

  a little wooded slope toward

  the conveniences:

  oaks, choke-cherry,

  dogwoods, white and green, iron-wood :

  humped roots matted into the shallow soil

  —mostly gone: rock out-croppings

 
polished by the feet of the picnickers:

  sweetbarked sassafras .

  leaning from the rancid grease:

  deformity—

  —to be deciphered (a horn, a trumpet!)

  an elucidation by multiplicity,

  a corrosion, a parasitic curd, a clarion

  for belief, to be good dogs :

  NO DOGS ALLOWED AT LARGE IN THIS PARK

  . . .

  The descent beckons

  as the ascent beckoned

  Memory is a kind

  of accomplishment

  a sort of renewal

  even

  an initiation, since the spaces it opens are new

  places

  inhabited by hordes

  heretofore unrealized,

  of new kinds—

  since their movements

  are towards new objectives

  (even though formerly they were abandoned)

  No defeat is made up entirely of defeat—since

  the world it opens is always a place

  formerly

  unsuspected. A

  world lost,

  a world unsuspected

  beckons to new places

  and no whiteness (lost) is so white as the memory

  of whiteness .

  With evening, love wakens

  though its shadows

  which are alive by reason

  of the sun shining—

  grow sleepy now and drop away

  from desire .

  Love without shadows stirs now

  beginning to waken

  as night

  advances.

  The descent

  made up of despairs

  and without accomplishment

  realizes a new awakening :

  which is a reversal

  of despair.

  For what we cannot accomplish, what

  is denied to love,

  what we have lost in the anticipation—

  a descent follows,

  endless and indestructible .

  . . .

  On this most voluptuous night of the year

  the term of the moon is yellow with no light

  the air’s soft, the night bird has

  only one note, the cherry tree in bloom

  makes a blur on the woods, its perfume

  no more than half guessed moves in the mind.

  No insect is yet awake, leaves are few.

  In the arching trees there is no sleep.

 

‹ Prev