Grown tired of flight. Like a dark rabbi, I
Observed, when young, the nature of mankind,
In lordly study. Every day, I found
Man proved a gobbet in my mincing world.
Like a rose rabbi, later, I pursued,
And still pursue, the origin and course
Of love, but until now I never knew
That fluttering things have so distinct a shade.
SOURCE: Others: A Magazine of the New Verse. (December 1918).
Earthy Anecdote (1919)
Every time the bucks went clattering
Over Oklahoma,
A firecat bristled in the way.
Wherever they went,
They went clattering,
Until they swerved,
In a swift, circular line,
To the right,
Because of the firecat.
Or until they swerved,
In a swift, circular line,
To the left,
Because of the firecat.
The bucks clattered.
The firecat went leaping,
To the right, to the left,
And
Bristled in the way.
Later, the firecat closed his bright eyes
And slept.
SOURCE: Others: A Magazine of the New Verse (July 1919).
Anecdote of the Jar (1919)
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.
It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.
SOURCE: Poetry (October 1919).
The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad (1921)
The time of year has grown indifferent.
Mildew of summer and the deepening snow
Are both alike in the routine I know.
I am too dumbly in my being pent.
The wind attendant on the solstices
Blows on the shutters of the metropoles,
Stirring no poet in his sleep, and tolls
The grand ideas of the villages.
The malady of the quotidian . . .
Perhaps, if summer ever came to rest
And lengthened, deepened, comforted, caressed
Through days like oceans in obsidian
Horizons full of night’s midsummer blaze;
Perhaps, if winter once could penetrate
Through all its purples to the final slate,
Persisting bleakly in an icy haze;
One might in turn become less diffident—
Out of such mildew plucking neater mould
And spouting new orations of the cold.
One might. One might. But time will not relent.
SOURCE: The New Republic (September 14, 1921).
The Snow Man (1921)
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
SOURCE: Poetry (October 1921).
Of Heaven Considered as a Tomb (1921)
What word have you, interpreters, of men
Who in the tomb of heaven walk by night,
The darkened ghosts of our old comedy?
Do they believe they range the gusty cold,
With lanterns borne aloft to light the way,
Freemen of death, about and still about
To find whatever it is they seek? Or does
That burial, pillared up each day as porte
And spiritous passage into nothingness,
Foretell each night the one abysmal night,
When the host shall no more wander, nor the light
Of the steadfast lanterns creep across the dark?
Make hue among the dark comedians,
Halloo them in the topmost distances
For answer from their icy Elysée.
SOURCE: Poetry (October 1921).
The Bird with the Coppery, Keen Claws (1921)
Above the forest of the parakeets,
A parakeet of parakeets prevails,
A pip of life amid a mort of tails.
(The rudiments of tropics are around,
Aloe of ivory, pear of rusty rind).
His lids are white because his eyes are blind.
He is not paradise of parakeets,
Of his gold ether, golden alguazil,
Except because he broods there and is still.
Panache upon panache, his tails deploy
Upward and outward, in green-vented forms,
His tip a drop of water full of storms.
But though the turbulent tinges undulate
As his pure intellect applies its laws,
He moves not on his coppery, keen claws.
He munches a dry shell while he exerts
His will, yet never ceases, perfect cock,
To flare, in the sun-pallor of his rock.
SOURCE: Broom: An International Magazine of the Arts (December 1921).
Bantams in Pine-Woods (1922)
Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan
Of tan with henna hackles, halt!
Damned universal cock, as if the sun
Was blackamoor to bear your blazing tail.
Fat! Fat! Fat! Fat! I am the personal.
Your world is you. I am my world.
You ten-foot poet among inchlings. Fat!
Begone! An inchling bristles in these pines,
Bristles, and points their Appalachian tangs,
And fears not portly Azcan nor his hoos.
SOURCE: The Dial (July 1922).
The Emperor of Ice-Cream (1922)
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
SOURCE: The Dial (July 1922).
* * *
1. The following version is the “Sunday Morning” as it was first published—cropped and rearranged by the editor of Poetry Magazine, Harriet Monroe. Stevens restored the poem in 1923 in Harmonium.
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) was probably the most influential American poet of the twentieth century; his work, so vivid and clear, conveyed image and thought in lightning strokes. For most of his life, Williams was a doctor in Rutherford, New Jersey, and wrote poetry, fiction, and essays in the moments and periods that he wasn’t seeing patients.
The Young H
ousewife (1916)
At ten A.M. the young housewife
moves about in négligé behind
the wooden walls of her husband’s house.
I pass solitary in my car.
Then again she comes to the curb
to call the ice-man, fish-man, and stands
shy, uncorseted, tucking in
stray ends of hair, and I compare her
to a fallen leaf.
The noiseless wheels of my car
rush with a crackling sound over
dried leaves as I bow and pass smiling.
SOURCE: Others: A Magazine of the New Verse. December 1916.
Pastoral (“When I was younger”) (1917)
When I was younger
it was plain to me
I must make something of myself.
Older now
I walk back streets
admiring the houses
of the very poor:
roof out of line with sides
the yards cluttered
with old chicken wire, ashes,
furniture gone wrong;
the fences and outhouses
built of barrel-staves
and parts of boxes, all,
if I am fortunate,
smeared a bluish green
that properly weathered
pleases me best
of all colors.
No one
will believe this
of vast import to the nation.
SOURCE: William Carlos Williams. Al Que Quiere! Boston: The Four Seas Company, 1917.
Apology (1917)
Why do I write today?
The beauty of
the terrible faces
of our nonentities
stirs me to it:
colored women
day workers—
old and experienced—
returning home at dusk
in cast off clothing
faces like
old Florentine oak.
Also
the set pieces
of your faces stir me—
leading citizens—
but not
in the same way.
SOURCE: William Carlos Williams. Al Que Quiere! Boston: The Four Seas Company, 1917.
Danse Russe (1917)
If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,—
if I in my north room
danse naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
“I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!”
If I admire my arms, my face
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,—
who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?
SOURCE: William Carlos Williams. Al Que Quiere! Boston: The Four Seas Company, 1917.
Smell! (1917)
Oh strong ridged and deeply hollowed
nose of mine! what will you not be smelling?
What tactless asses we are, you and I, boney nose,
always indiscriminate, always unashamed,
and now it is the souring flowers of the bedraggled
poplars: a festering pulp on the wet earth
beneath them. With what deep thirst
we quicken our desires
to that rank odor of a passing springtime!
Can you not be decent? Can you not reserve your ardors
for something less unlovely? What girl will care
for us, do you think, if we continue in these ways?
Must you taste everything? Must you know everything?
Must you have a part in everything?
SOURCE: William Carlos Williams. Al Que Quiere! Boston: The Four Seas Company, 1917.
Spring Strains (1917)
In a tissue-thin monotone of blue-grey buds
crowded erect with desire against
the sky—
tense blue-grey twigs
slenderly anchoring them down, drawing
them in—
two blue-grey birds chasing
a third struggle in circles, angles,
swift convergings to a point that bursts
instantly!
Vibrant bowing limbs
pull downward, sucking in the sky
that bulges from behind, plastering itself
against them in packed rifts, rock blue
and dirty orange!
But—
(Hold hard, rigid jointed trees!)
the blinding and red-edged sun-blur—
creeping energy, concentrated
counterforce—welds sky, buds, trees,
rivets them in one puckering hold!
Sticks through! Pulls the whole
counter-pulling mass upward, to the right,
locks even the opaque, not yet defined
ground in a terrific drag that is
loosening the very tap-roots!
On a tissue-thin monotone of blue-grey buds
two blue-grey birds, chasing a third,
at full cry! Now they are
flung outward and up—disappearing suddenly!
SOURCE: William Carlos Williams. Al Que Quiere! Boston: The Four Seas Company, 1917.
To a Solitary Disciple (1917)
Rather notice, mon cher,
that the moon is
tilted above
the point of the steeple
than that its color
is shell-pink.
Rather observe
that it is early morning
than that the sky
is smooth
as a turquoise.
Rather grasp
how the dark
converging lines
of the steeple
meet at the pinnacle—
perceive how
its little ornament
tries to stop them—
See how it fails!
See how the converging lines
of the hexagonal spire
escape upward—
receding, dividing!
—sepals
that guard and contain
the flower!
how motionless
the eaten moon
lies in the protecting lines.
It is true:
in the light colors
of morning
brown-stone and slate
shine orange and dark blue.
But observe
the oppressive weight
of the squat edifice!
Observe
the jasmine lightness
of the moon.
SOURCE: William Carlos Williams. Al Que Quiere! Boston: The Four Seas Company, 1917.
Dedication for a Plot of Ground (1917)
This plot of ground
facing the waters of this inlet
is dedicated to the living presence of
Emily Richardson Wellcome
who was born in England; married;
lost her husband and with
her five year old son
sailed for New York in a two-master;
was driven to the Azores;
ran adrift on Fire Island shoal,
met her second husband
in a Brooklyn boarding house,
went with him to Puerto Rico
bore three more children, lost
her second husband, lived hard
for eight years in St. Thomas,
Puerto Rico, San Domingo, followed
the oldest son to New York,
lost her daughter, lost her “baby,”
seized the two boys of
the oldest son by th
e second marriage
mothered them—they being
motherless—fought for them
against the other grandmother
and the aunts, brought them here
summer after summer, defended
herself here against thieves,
storms, sun, fire,
against flies, against girls
that came smelling about, against
drought, against weeds, storm-tides,
neighbors, weasles that stole her chickens,
against the weakness of her own hands,
against the growing strength of
the boys, against wind, against
the stones, against trespassers,
against rents, against her own mind.
She grubbed this earth with her own hands,
domineered over this grass plot,
blackguarded her oldest son
into buying it, lived here fifteen years,
attained a final loneliness and—
If you can bring nothing to this place
but your carcass, keep out.
SOURCE: William Carlos Williams. Al Que Quiere! Boston: The Four Seas Company, 1917.
Le Médicin Malgré Lui (1918)
Oh I suppose I should
Wash the walls of my office,
Polish the rust from
My instruments and keep them
Definitely in order;
Build shelves in
The little laboratory;
Empty out the old stains,
Clean the bottles
And refill them; buy
Another lens; put
My journals on edge instead of
Letting them lie flat
In heaps—then begin
Ten years back and
Gradually
Read them to date,
Cataloguing important
Articles for ready reference.
I suppose I should
Read the new books.
If to this I added
A bill at the tailor’s
And the cleaner’s
And grew a decent beard
And cultivated a look
Of importance—
Who can tell? I might be
A credit to my Lady Happiness
And never think anything
But a white thought!
SOURCE: Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. July 1918.
To Mark Anthony in Heaven (1920)
This quiet morning light
reflected, how many times!
from grass and trees and clouds
enters my north room
touching the walls with