The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Book of Poems, Al Que Quiere! This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: A Book of Poems, Al Que Quiere! Author: William Carlos Williams Release date: May 4, 2016 [eBook #51997] Most recently updated: October 23, 2024 Language: English Credits: Produced by Meredith Bach and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BOOK OF POEMS, AL QUE QUIERE! *** A BOOK OF POEMS AL QUE QUIERE! +--------------------------------+ | _By William Carlos Williams_ | | | | THE TEMPERS | | | | [London: Elkin Mathews] | +--------------------------------+ A BOOK OF POEMS AL QUE QUIERE! BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS [Illustration: colophon] BOSTON THE FOUR SEAS COMPANY 1917 _Copyright, 1917, by_ THE FOUR SEAS COMPANY The Four Seas Press Boston, Mass., U. S. A. Había sido un arbusto desmedrado que prolonga sus filamentos hasta encontrar el humus necesario en una tierra nueva. Y cómo me nutría! Me nutría con la beatitud con que las hojas trémulas de clorófila se extienden al sol; con la beatitud con que una raíz encuentra un cadáver en descompositión; con la beatitud con que los convalecientes dan sus pasos vacilantes en las mañanas de primavera, bañadas de luz; ... RAFAEL ARÉVALO MARTÍNEZ Many of the poems in this book have appeared in magazines, especially in _Poetry_, _Others_, _The Egoist_, and _The Poetry Journal_. CONTENTS PAGE SUB TERRA 13 PASTORAL 14 CHICKORY AND DAISIES 15 METRIC FIGURE 16 WOMAN WALKING 17 GULLS 18 APPEAL 19 IN HARBOR 20 WINTER SUNSET 21 APOLOGY 22 PASTORAL 23 LOVE SONG 24 M. B. 25 TRACT 26 PROMENADE 29 EL HOMBRE 31 HERO 31 LIBERTAD! IGUALDAD! FRATERNIDAD! 32 CANTHARA 33 MUJER 33 SUMMER SONG 34 LOVE SONG 35 FOREIGN 35 A PRELUDE 36 HISTORY 37 WINTER QUIET 42 DAWN 42 GOOD NIGHT 43 DANSE RUSSE 44 PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN IN BED 45 VIRTUE 47 CONQUEST 49 PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN WITH A BAD HEART 49 KELLER GEGEN DOM 50 SMELL 52 BALLET 52 SYMPATHETIC PORTRAIT OF A CHILD 54 THE OGRE 55 RIPOSTE 56 THE OLD MEN 57 PASTORAL 57 SPRING STRAINS 58 TREES 59 A PORTRAIT IN GREYS 60 INVITATION 61 DIVERTIMIENTO 62 JANUARY MORNING 62 TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE 67 DEDICATION FOR A PLOT OF GROUND 69 K. MCB. 70 LOVE SONG 71 THE WANDERER 75 AL QUE QUIERE! SUB TERRA Where shall I find you, you my grotesque fellows that I seek everywhere to make up my band? None, not one with the earthy tastes I require; the burrowing pride that rises subtly as on a bush in May. Where are you this day, you my seven year locusts with cased wings? Ah my beauties how I long--! That harvest that shall be your advent-- thrusting up through the grass, up under the weeds answering me, _that_ shall be satisfying! The light shall leap and snap that day as with a million lashes! Oh, I have you; yes you are about me in a sense: playing under the blue pools that are my windows,-- but they shut you out still, there in the half light. For the simple truth is that though I see you clear enough you are not there! It is not that--it is you, you I want! --God, if I could fathom the guts of shadows! You to come with me poking into negro houses with their gloom and smell! In among children leaping around a dead dog! Mimicking onto the lawns of the rich! You! to go with me a-tip-toe, head down under heaven, nostrils lipping the wind! PASTORAL 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. CHICKORY AND DAISIES I. Lift your flowers on bitter stems chickory! Lift them up out of the scorched ground! Bear no foliage but give yourself wholly to that! Strain under them you bitter stems that no beast eats-- and scorn greyness! Into the heat with them: cool! luxuriant! sky-blue! The earth cracks and is shriveled up; the wind moans piteously; the sky goes out if you should fail. II. I saw a child with daisies for weaving into the hair tear the stems with her teeth! METRIC FIGURE There is a bird in the poplars! It is the sun! The leaves are little yellow fish swimming in the river. The bird skims above them, day is on his wings. Phœbus! It is he that is making the great gleam among the poplars! It is his singing outshines the noise of leaves clashing in the wind. WOMAN WALKING An oblique cloud of purple smoke across a milky silhouette of house sides and tiny trees-- a little village-- that ends in a saw edge of mist-covered trees on a sheet of grey sky. To the right, jutting in, a dark crimson corner of roof. To the left, half a tree: --what a blessing it is to see you in the street again, powerful woman, coming with swinging haunches, breasts straight forward, supple shoulders, full arms and strong, soft hands (I’ve felt them) carrying the heavy basket. I might well see you oftener! And for a different reason than the fresh eggs you bring us so regularly. Yes, you, young as I, with boney brows, kind grey eyes and a kind mouth; you walking out toward me from that dead hillside! I might well see you oftener. GULLS My townspeople, beyond in the great world, are many with whom it were far more profitable for me to live than here with you. These whirr about me calling, calling! and for my own part I answer them, loud as I can, but they, being free, pass! I remain! Therefore, listen! For you will not soon have another singer. First I say this: you have seen the strange birds, have you not, that sometimes rest upon our river in winter? Let them cause you to think well then of the storms that drive many to shelter. These things do not happen without reason. And the next thing I say is this: I saw an eagle once circling against the clouds over one of our principal churches-- Easter, it was--a beautiful day!--: three gulls came from above the river and crossed slowly seaward! Oh, I know you have your own hymns, I have heard them-- and because I knew they invoked some great protector I could not be angry with you, no matter how much they outraged true music-- You see, it is not necessary for us to leap at each other, and, as I told you, in the end the gulls moved seaward very quietly. APPEAL You who are so mighty, crimson salamander, hear me once more. I lay among the half burned sticks at the edge of the fire. The fiend was creeping in. I felt the cold tips of fingers-- O crimson salamander! Give me one little flame, one! that I may bind it protectingly about the wrist of him that flung me here, here upon the very center! This is my song. IN HARBOR Surely there, among the great docks, is peace, my mind; there with the ships moored in the river. Go out, timid child, and snuggle in among the great ships talking so quietly. Maybe you will even fall asleep near them and be lifted into one of their laps, and in the morning-- There is always the morning in which to remember it all! Of what are they gossiping? God knows. And God knows it matters little for we cannot understand them. Yet it is certainly of the sea, of that there can be no question. It is a quiet sound. Rest! That’s all I care for now. The smell of them will put us to sleep presently. Smell! It is the sea water mingling here into the river-- at least so it seems--perhaps it is something else--but what matter? The sea water! It is quiet and smooth here! How slowly they move, little by little trying the hawsers that drop and groan with their agony. Yes, it is certainly of the high sea they are talking. WINTER SUNSET Then I raised my head and stared out over the blue February waste to the blue bank of hill with stars on it in strings and festoons-- but above that: one opaque stone of a cloud just on the hill left and right as far as I could see; and above that a red streak, then icy blue sky! It was a fearful thing to come into a man’s heart at that time: that stone over the little blinking stars they’d set there. APOLOGY 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. PASTORAL The little sparrows hop ingenuously about the pavement quarreling with sharp voices over those things that interest them. But we who are wiser shut ourselves in on either hand and no one knows whether we think good or evil. Meanwhile, the old man who goes about gathering dog-lime walks in the gutter without looking up and his tread is more majestic than that of the Episcopal minister approaching the pulpit of a Sunday. These things astonish me beyond words. LOVE SONG Daisies are broken petals are news of the day stems lift to the grass tops they catch on shoes part in the middle leave root and leaves secure. Black branches carry square leaves to the wood’s top. They hold firm break with a roar show the white! Your moods are slow the shedding of leaves and sure the return in May! We walked in your father’s grove and saw the great oaks lying with roots ripped from the ground. M. B. Winter has spent this snow out of envy, but spring is here! He sits at the breakfast table in his yellow hair and disdains even the sun walking outside in spangled slippers: He looks out: there is a glare of lights before a theater,-- a sparkling lady passes quickly to the seclusion of her carriage. Presently under the dirty, wavy heaven of a borrowed room he will make re-inhaled tobacco smoke his clouds and try them against the sky’s limits! TRACT I will teach you my townspeople how to perform a funeral-- for you have it over a troop of artists-- unless one should scour the world-- you have the ground sense necessary. See! the hearse leads. I begin with a design for a hearse. For Christ’s sake not black-- nor white either-- and not polished! Let it be weathered-- like a farm wagon-- with gilt wheels (this could be applied fresh at small expense) or no wheels at all: a rough dray to drag over the ground. Knock the glass out! My God--glass, my townspeople! For what purpose? Is it for the dead to look out or for us to see how well he is housed or to see the flowers or the lack of them-- or what? To keep the rain and snow from him? He will have a heavier rain soon: pebbles and dirt and what not. Let there be no glass-- and no upholstery phew! and no little brass rollers and small easy wheels on the bottom-- my townspeople what are you thinking of? A rough plain hearse then with gilt wheels and no top at all. On this the coffin lies by its own weight. No wreathes please-- especially no hot house flowers. Some common memento is better, something he prized and is known by: his old clothes-- a few books perhaps-- God knows what! You realize how we are about these things my townspeople-- something will be found-- anything even flowers if he had come to that. So much for the hearse. For heaven’s sake though see to the driver! Take off the silk hat! In fact that’s no place at all for him-- up there unceremoniously dragging our friend out to his own dignity! Bring him down-- bring him down! Low and inconspicuous! I’d not have him ride on the wagon at all-- damn him-- the undertaker’s understrapper! Let him hold the reins and walk at the side and inconspicuously too! Then briefly as to yourselves: Walk behind-- as they do in France, seventh class, or if you ride Hell take curtains! Go with some show of inconvenience; sit openly-- to the weather as to grief. Or do you think you can shut grief in? What--from us? We who have perhaps nothing to lose? Share with us share with us-- it will be money in your pockets. Go now I think you are ready. PROMENADE I. Well, mind, here we have our little son beside us: a little diversion before breakfast! Come, we’ll walk down the road till the bacon will be frying. We might better be idle? A poem might come of it? Oh, be useful. Save annoyance to Flossie and besides--the wind! It’s cold. It blows our old pants out! It makes us shiver! See the heavy trees shifting their weight before it. Let us be trees, an old house, a hill with grass on it! The baby’s arms are blue. Come, move! Be quieted! II. So. We’ll sit here now and throw pebbles into this water-trickle. Splash the water up! (Splash it up, Sonny!) Laugh! Hit it there deep under the grass. See it splash! Ah, mind, see it splash! It is alive! Throw pieces of broken leaves into it. They’ll pass through. No! Yes--just! Away now for the cows! But-- It’s cold! It’s getting dark. It’s going to rain. No further! III. Oh then, a wreath! Let’s refresh something they used to write well of. Two fern plumes. Strip them to the mid-rib along one side. Bind the tips with a grass stem. Bend and intertwist the stalks at the back. So! Ah! now we are crowned! Now we are a poet! Quickly! A bunch of little flowers for Flossie--the little ones only: a red clover, one blue heal-all, a sprig of bone-set, one primrose, a head of Indian tobacco, this magenta speck and this little lavender! Home now, my mind!-- Sonny’s arms are icy, I tell you-- and have breakfast! EL HOMBRE It’s a strange courage you give me ancient star: Shine alone in the sunrise toward which you lend no part! HERO Fool, put your adventures into those things which break ships-- not female flesh. Let there pass over the mind the waters of four oceans, the airs of four skies! Return hollow-bellied, keen-eyed, hard! A simple scar or two. Little girls will come bringing you roses for your button-hole. LIBERTAD! IGUALDAD! FRATERNIDAD! You sullen pig of a man you force me into the mud with your stinking ash-cart! Brother! --if we were rich we’d stick our chests out and hold our heads high! It is dreams that have destroyed us. There is no more pride in horses or in rein holding. We sit hunched together brooding our fate. Well-- all things turn bitter in the end whether you choose the right or the left way and-- dreams are not a bad thing. CANTHARA The old black-man showed me how he had been shocked in his youth by six women, dancing a set-dance, stark naked below the skirts raised round their breasts: bellies flung forward knees flying! --while his gestures, against the tiled wall of the dingy bath-room, swished with ecstasy to the familiar music of his old emotion. MUJER Oh, black Persian cat! Was not your life already cursed with offspring? We took you for rest to that old Yankee farm,--so lonely and with so many field mice in the long grass-- and you return to us in this condition--! Oh, black Persian cat. SUMMER SONG Wanderer moon smiling a faintly ironical smile at this brilliant, dew-moistened summer morning,-- a detached sleepily indifferent smile, a wanderer’s smile,-- if I should buy a shirt your color and put on a necktie sky blue where would they carry me? LOVE SONG Sweep the house clean, hang fresh curtains in the windows put on a new dress and come with me! The elm is scattering its little loaves of sweet smells from a white sky! Who shall hear of us in the time to come? Let him say there was a burst of fragrance from black branches. FOREIGN Artsybashev is a Russian. I am an American. Let us wonder, my townspeople, if Artsybashev tends his own fires as I do, gets himself cursed for the baby’s failure to thrive, loosens windows for the woman who cleans his parlor-- or has he neat servants and a quiet library, an intellectual wife perhaps and no children,--an apartment somewhere in a back street or lives alone or with his mother or sister-- I wonder, my townspeople, if Artsybashev looks upon himself the more concernedly or succeeds any better than I in laying the world. I wonder which is the bigger fool in his own mind. These are shining topics my townspeople but-- hardly of great moment. A PRELUDE I know only the bare rocks of today. In these lies my brown sea-weed,-- green quartz veins bent through the wet shale; in these lie my pools left by the tide-- quiet, forgetting waves; on these stiffen white star fish; on these I slip bare footed! Whispers of the fishy air touch my body; “Sisters,” I say to them. HISTORY I. A wind might blow a lotus petal over the pyramids--but not this wind. Summer is a dried leaf. Leaves stir this way then that on the baked asphalt, the wheels of motor cars rush over them,-- gas smells mingle with leaf smells. Oh, Sunday, day of worship!!! The steps to the museum are high. Worshippers pass in and out. Nobody comes here today. I come here to mingle faiance dug from the tomb, turquoise colored necklaces and belched wind from the stomach; delicately veined basins of agate, cracked and discolored and the stink of stale urine! Enter! Elbow in at the door. Men? Women? Simpering, clay fetish-faces counting through the turnstile. Ah! II. This sarcophagus contained the body of Uresh-Nai, priestess to the goddess Mut, Mother of All-- Run your finger against this edge! --here went the chisel!--and think of an arrogance endured six thousand years without a flaw! But love is an oil to embalm the body. Love is a packet of spices, a strong smelling liquid to be squirted into the thigh. No? Love rubbed on a bald head will make hair--and after? Love is a lice comber! Gnats on dung! “The chisel is in your hand, the block is before you, cut as I shall dictate: this is the coffin of Uresh-Nai, priestess to the sky goddess,--built to endure forever! Carve the inside with the image of my death in little lines of figures three fingers high. Put a lid on it cut with Mut bending over the earth, for my headpiece, and in the year to be chosen I will rouse, the lid shall be lifted and I will walk about the temple where they have rested me and eat the air of the place: Ah--these walls are high! This is in keeping.” III. The priestess has passed into her tomb. The stone has taken up her spirit! Granite over flesh: who will deny its advantages? Your death?--water spilled upon the ground-- though water will mount again into rose-leaves-- but you?--would hold life still, even as a memory, when it is over. Benevolence is rare. Climb about this sarcophagus, read what is writ for you in these figures, hard as the granite that has held them with so soft a hand the while your own flesh has been fifty times through the guts of oxen,--read! “The rose-tree will have its donor even though he give stingily. The gift of some endures ten years, the gift of some twenty and the gift of some for the time a great house rots and is torn down. Some give for a thousand years to men of one face, some for a thousand to all men and some few to all men while granite holds an edge against the weather. Judge then of love!” IV. “My flesh is turned to stone. I have endured my summer. The flurry of falling petals is ended. Lay the finger upon this granite. I was well desired and fully caressed by many lovers but my flesh withered swiftly and my heart was never satisfied. Lay your hands upon the granite as a lover lays his hand upon the thigh and upon the round breasts of her who is beside him, for now I will not wither, now I have thrown off secrecy, now I have walked naked into the street, now I have scattered my heavy beauty in the open market. Here I am with head high and a burning heart eagerly awaiting your caresses, whoever it may be, for granite is not harder than my love is open, runs loose among you! I arrogant against death! I who have endured! I worn against the years!” V. But it is five o’clock. Come! Life is good--enjoy it! A walk in the park while the day lasts. I will go with you. Look! this northern scenery is not the Nile, but-- these benches--the yellow and purple dusk-- the moon there--these tired people-- the lights on the water! Are not these Jews and--Ethiopians? The world is young, surely! Young and colored like--a girl that has come upon a lover! Will that do? WINTER QUIET Limb to limb, mouth to mouth with the bleached grass silver mist lies upon the back yards among the outhouses. The dwarf trees pirouette awkwardly to it-- whirling round on one toe; the big tree smiles and glances upward! Tense with suppressed excitement the fences watch where the ground has humped an aching shoulder for the ecstasy. DAWN Ecstatic bird songs pound the hollow vastness of the sky with metallic clinkings-- beating color up into it at a far edge,--beating it, beating it with rising, triumphant ardor,-- stirring it into warmth, quickening in it a spreading change,-- bursting wildly against it as dividing the horizon, a heavy sun lifts himself--is lifted-- bit by bit above the edge of things,--runs free at last out into the open--! lumbering glorified in full release upward--songs cease. GOOD NIGHT In brilliant gas light I turn the kitchen spigot and watch the water plash into the clean white sink. On the grooved drain-board to one side is a glass filled with parsley-- crisped green. Waiting for the water to freshen-- I glance at the spotless floor--: a pair of rubber sandals lie side by side under the wall-table, all is in order for the night. Waiting, with a glass in my hand --three girls in crimson satin pass close before me on the murmurous background of the crowded opera-- it is memory playing the clown-- three vague, meaningless girls full of smells and the rustling sound of cloth rubbing on cloth and little slippers on carpet-- high-school French spoken in a loud voice! Parsley in a glass, still and shining, brings me back. I take my drink and yawn deliciously. I am ready for bed. DANSE RUSSE 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? PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN IN BED There’s my things drying in the corner: that blue skirt joined to the grey shirt-- I’m sick of trouble! Lift the covers if you want me and you’ll see the rest of my clothes-- though it would be cold lying with nothing on! I won’t work and I’ve got no cash. What are you going to do about it? --and no jewelry (the crazy fools) But I’ve my two eyes and a smooth face and here’s this! look! it’s high! There’s brains and blood in there-- my name’s Robitza! Corsets can go to the devil-- and drawers along with them! What do I care! My two boys? --they’re keen! Let the rich lady care for them-- they’ll beat the school or let them go to the gutter-- that ends trouble. This house is empty isn’t it? Then it’s mine because I need it. Oh, I won’t starve while there’s the Bible to make them feed me. Try to help me if you want trouble or leave me alone-- that ends trouble. The county physician is a damned fool and you can go to hell! You could have closed the door when you came in; do it when you go out. I’m tired. VIRTUE Now? Why-- whirl-pools of orange and purple flame feather twists of chrome on a green ground funneling down upon the steaming phallus-head of the mad sun himself-- blackened crimson! Now? Why-- it is the smile of her the smell of her the vulgar inviting mouth of her! It is--Oh, nothing new nothing that lasts an eternity, nothing worth putting out to interest, nothing-- but the fixing of an eye concretely upon emptiness! Come! here are-- cross-eyed men, a boy with a patch, men walking in their shirts, men in hats dark men, a pale man with little black moustaches and a dirty white coat, fat men with pudgy faces, thin faces, crooked faces slit eyes, grey eyes, black eyes old men with dirty beards, men in vests with gold watch chains. Come! CONQUEST [_Dedicated to F. W._] Hard, chilly colors: straw grey, frost grey the grey of frozen ground: and you, O sun, close above the horizon! It is I holds you-- half against the sky half against a black tree trunk icily resplendent! Lie there, blue city, mine at last-- rimming the banked blue grey and rise, indescribable smoky yellow into the overpowering white! PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN WITH A BAD HEART Have I seen her? Only through the window across the street. If I go meeting her on the corner some damned fool will go blabbing it to the old man and she’ll get hell. He’s a queer old bastard! Every time he sees me you’d think I wanted to kill him. But I figure it out it’s best to let things stay as they are-- for a while at least. It’s hard giving up the thing you want most in the world, but with this damned pump of mine liable to give out ... She’s a good kid and I’d hate to hurt her but if she can get over it-- it’d be the best thing. KELLER GEGEN DOM Witness, would you-- one more young man in the evening of his love hurrying to confession: steps down a gutter crosses a street goes in at a doorway opens for you-- like some great flower-- a room filled with lamplight; or whirls himself obediently to the curl of a hill some wind-dancing afternoon; lies for you in the futile darkness of a wall, sets stars dancing to the crack of a leaf-- and--leaning his head away-- snuffs (secretly) the bitter powder from his thumb’s hollow, takes your blessing and goes home to bed? Witness instead whether you like it or not a dark vinegar smelling place from which trickles the chuckle of beginning laughter It strikes midnight. SMELL! 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 spring-time! 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? BALLET Are you not weary, great gold cross shining in the wind-- are you not weary of seeing the stars turning over you and the sun going to his rest and you frozen with a great lie that leaves you rigid as a knight on a marble coffin? --and you, higher, still, robin, untwisting a song from the bare top-twigs, are you not weary of labor, even the labor of a song? Come down--join me for I am lonely. First it will be a quiet pace to ease our stiffness but as the west yellows you will be ready! Here in the middle of the roadway we will fling ourselves round with dust lilies till we are bound in their twining stems! We will tear their flowers with arms flashing! And when the astonished stars push aside their curtains they will see us fall exhausted where wheels and the pounding feet of horses will crush forth our laughter. SYMPATHETIC PORTRAIT OF A CHILD The murderer’s little daughter who is barely ten years old jerks her shoulders right and left so as to catch a glimpse of me without turning round. Her skinny little arms wrap themselves this way then that reversely about her body! Nervously she crushes her straw hat about her eyes and tilts her head to deepen the shadow-- smiling excitedly! As best as she can she hides herself in the full sunlight her cordy legs writhing beneath the little flowered dress that leaves them bare from mid-thigh to ankle-- Why has she chosen me for the knife that darts along her smile? THE OGRE Sweet child, little girl with well shaped legs you cannot touch the thoughts I put over and under and around you. This is fortunate for they would burn you to an ash otherwise. Your petals would be quite curled up. This is all beyond you--no doubt, yet you do feel the brushings of the fine needles; the tentative lines of your whole body prove it to me; so does your fear of me, your shyness; likewise the toy baby cart that you are pushing-- and besides, mother has begun to dress your hair in a knot. These are my excuses. RIPOSTE Love is like water or the air my townspeople; it cleanses, and dissipates evil gases. It is like poetry too and for the same reasons. Love is so precious my townspeople that if I were you I would have it under lock and key-- like the air or the Atlantic or like poetry! THE OLD MEN Old men who have studied every leg show in the city Old men cut from touch by the perfumed music-- polished or fleeced skulls that stand before the whole theater in silent attitudes of attention,-- old men who have taken precedence over young men and even over dark-faced husbands whose minds are a street with arc-lights. Solitary old men for whom we find no excuses-- I bow my head in shame for those who malign you. Old men the peaceful beer of impotence be yours! PASTORAL If I say I have heard voices who will believe me? “None has dipped his hand in the black waters of the sky nor picked the yellow lilies that sway on their clear stems and no tree has waited long enough nor still enough to touch fingers with the moon.” I looked and there were little frogs with puffed out throats, singing in the slime. SPRING STRAINS 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! TREES Crooked, black tree on your little grey-black hillock, ridiculously raised one step toward the infinite summits of the night: even you the few grey stars draw upward into a vague melody of harsh threads. Bent as you are from straining against the bitter horizontals of a north wind,--there below you how easily the long yellow notes of poplars flow upward in a descending scale, each note secure in its own posture--singularly woven. All voices are blent willingly against the heaving contra-bass of the dark but you alone warp yourself passionately to one side in your eagerness. A PORTRAIT IN GREYS Will it never be possible to separate you from your greyness? Must you be always sinking backward into your grey-brown landscapes--and trees always in the distance, always against a grey sky? Must I be always moving counter to you? Is there no place where we can be at peace together and the motion of our drawing apart be altogether taken up? I see myself standing upon your shoulders touching a grey, broken sky-- but you, weighted down with me, yet gripping my ankles,--move laboriously on, where it is level and undisturbed by colors. INVITATION You who had the sense to choose me such a mother, you who had the indifference to create me, you who went to some pains to leave hands off me in the formative stages,-- (I thank you most for that perhaps) but you who with an iron head, first, fiercest and with strongest love brutalized me into strength, old dew-lap,-- I have reached the stage where I am teaching myself to laugh. Come on, take a walk with me. DIVERTIMIENTO Miserable little woman in a brown coat-- quit whining! My hand for you! We’ll skip down the tin cornices of Main Street flicking the dull roof-line with our toe-tips! Hop clear of the bank! A pin-wheel round the white flag-pole. And I’ll sing you the while a thing to split your sides about Johann Sebastian Bach, the father of music, who had three wives and twenty-two children. JANUARY MORNING SUITE I. I have discovered that most of the beauties of travel are due to the strange hours we keep to see them: the domes of the Church of the Paulist Fathers in Weehawken against a smoky dawn--the heart stirred-- are beautiful as Saint Peters approached after years of anticipation. II. Though the operation was postponed I saw the tall probationers in their tan uniforms hurrying to breakfast! III. --and from basement entrys neatly coiffed, middle aged gentlemen with orderly moustaches and well brushed coats IV. --and the sun, dipping into the avenues streaking the tops of the irregular red houselets, and the gay shadows dropping and dropping. V. --and a young horse with a green bed-quilt on his withers shaking his head: bared teeth and nozzle high in the air! VI. --and a semicircle of dirt colored men about a fire bursting from an old ash can, VII. --and the worn, blue car rails (like the sky!) gleaming among the cobbles! VIII. --and the rickety ferry-boat “Arden”! What an object to be called “Arden” among the great piers,--on the ever new river! “Put me a Touchstone at the wheel, white gulls, and we’ll follow the ghost of the Half Moon to the North West Passage--and through! (at Albany!) for all that!” IX. Exquisite brown waves--long circlets of silver moving over you! enough with crumbling ice-crusts among you! The sky has come down to you, lighter than tiny bubbles, face to face with you! His spirit is a white gull with delicate pink feet and a snowy breast for you to hold to your lips delicately! X. The young doctor is dancing with happiness in the sparkling wind, alone at the prow of the ferry! He notices the curdy barnacles and broken ice crusts left at the slip’s base by the low tide and thinks of summer and green shell crusted ledges among the emerald eel-grass! XI. Who knows the Palisades as I do knows the river breaks east from them above the city--but they continue south --under the sky--to bear a crest of little peering houses that brighten with dawn behind the moody water-loving giants of Manhattan. XII. Long yellow rushes bending above the white snow patches; purple and gold ribbon of the distant wood: what an angle you make with each other as you lie there in contemplation. XIII. Work hard all your young days and they’ll find you too, some morning staring up under your chiffonier at its warped bass-wood bottom and your soul-- out! --among the little sparrows behind the shutter. XIV. --and the flapping flags are at half mast for the dead admiral. XV. All this-- was for you, old woman. I wanted to write a poem that you would understand. For what good is it to me if you can’t understand it? But you got to try hard-- But-- Well, you know how the young girls run giggling on Park Avenue after dark when they ought to be home in bed? Well, that’s the way it is with me somehow. TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE 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! Observe 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. DEDICATION FOR A PLOT OF GROUND 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 the 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. K. McB. You exquisite chunk of mud Kathleen--just like any other chunk of mud! --especially in April! Curl up round their shoes when they try to step on you, spoil the polish! I shall laugh till I am sick at their amazement. Do they expect the ground to be always solid? Give them the slip then; let them sit in you; soil their pants; teach them a dignity that is dignity, the dignity of mud! Lie basking in the sun then--fast asleep! Even become dust on occasion. LOVE SONG I lie here thinking of you:-- the stain of love is upon the world! Yellow, yellow, yellow it eats into the leaves, smears with saffron the horned branches that lean heavily against a smooth purple sky! There is no light only a honey-thick stain that drips from leaf to leaf and limb to limb spoiling the colors of the whole world-- you far off there under the wine-red selvage of the west! THE WANDERER _A Rococo Study_ ADVENT Even in the time when as yet I had no certain knowledge of her She sprang from the nest, a young crow, Whose first flight circled the forest. I know now how then she showed me Her mind, reaching out to the horizon, She close above the tree tops. I saw her eyes straining at the new distance And as the woods fell from her flying Likewise they fell from me as I followed-- So that I strongly guessed all that I must put from me To come through ready for the high courses. But one day, crossing the ferry With the great towers of Manhattan before me, Out at the prow with the sea wind blowing, I had been wearying many questions Which she had put on to try me: How shall I be a mirror to this modernity? When lo! in a rush, dragging A blunt boat on the yielding river-- Suddenly I saw her! And she waved me From the white wet in midst of her playing! She cried me, “Haia! Here I am, son! See how strong my little finger is! Can I not swim well? I can fly too!” And with that a great sea-gull Went to the left, vanishing with a wild cry-- But in my mind all the persons of godhead Followed after. CLARITY “Come!” cried my mind and by her might That was upon us we flew above the river Seeking her, grey gulls among the white-- In the air speaking as she had willed it: “I am given,” cried I, “now I know it! I know now all my time is forespent! For me one face is all the world! For I have seen her at last, this day, In whom age in age is united-- Indifferent, out of sequence, marvelously! Saving alone that one sequence Which is the beauty of all the world, for surely Either there in the rolling smoke spheres below us Or here with us in the air intercircling, Certainly somewhere here about us I know she is revealing these things!” And as gulls we flew and with soft cries We seemed to speak, flying, “It is she The mighty, recreating the whole world, This the first day of wonders! She is attiring herself before me-- Taking shape before me for worship, A red leaf that falls upon a stone! It is she of whom I told you, old Forgiveless, unreconcilable; That high wanderer of by-ways Walking imperious in beggary! At her throat is loose gold, a single chain From among many, on her bent fingers Are rings from which the stones are fallen, Her wrists wear a diminished state, her ankles Are bare! Toward the river! Is it she there?” And we swerved clamorously downward-- “I will take my peace in her henceforth!” BROADWAY It was then she struck--from behind, In mid air, as with the edge of a great wing! And instantly down the mists of my eyes There came crowds walking--- men as visions With expressionless, animate faces; Empty men with shell-thin bodies Jostling close above the gutter, Hasting--nowhere! And then for the first time I really saw her, really scented the sweat Of her presence and--fell back sickened! Ominous, old, painted-- With bright lips, and lewd Jew’s eyes Her might strapped in by a corset To give her age youth, perfect In her will to be young she had covered The godhead to go beside me. Silent, her voice entered at my eyes And my astonished thought followed her easily: “Well, do their eyes shine, do their clothes fit? These _live_ I tell you! Old men with red cheeks, Young men in gay suits! See them! Dogged, quivering, impassive-- Well--are these the ones you envied?” At which I answered her, “Marvelous old queen, Grant me power to catch something of this day’s Air and sun into your service! That these toilers after peace and after pleasure May turn to you, worshippers at all hours!” But she sniffed upon the words warily-- Yet I persisted, watching for an answer: “To you, horrible old woman, Who know all fires out of the bodies Of all men that walk with lust at heart! To you, O mighty, crafty prowler After the youth of all cities, drunk With the sight of thy archness! All the youth That come to you, you having the knowledge Rather than to those uninitiate-- To you, marvelous old queen, give me always A new marriage--” But she laughed loudly-- “A new grip upon those garments that brushed me In days gone by on beach, lawn, and in forest! May I be lifted still, up and out of terror, Up from before the death living around me-- Tom up continually and carried Whatever way the head of your whim is, A burr upon those streaming tatters--” But the night had fallen, she stilled me And led me away. PATERSON--THE STRIKE At the first peep of dawn she roused me! I rose trembling at the change which the night saw! For there, wretchedly brooding in a corner From which her old eyes glittered fiercely-- “Go!” she said, and I hurried shivering Out into the deserted streets of Paterson. That night she came again, hovering In rags within the filmy ceiling-- “Great Queen, bless me with thy tatters!” “You are blest, go on!” “Hot for savagery, Sucking the air! I went into the city, Out again, baffled onto the mountain! Back into the city! Nowhere The subtle! Everywhere the electric!” “A short bread-line before a hitherto empty tea shop: No questions--all stood patiently, Dominated by one idea: something That carried them as they are always wanting to be carried, ‘But what is it,’ I asked those nearest me, ‘This thing heretofore unobtainable That they seem so clever to have put on now!’ “Why since I have failed them can it be anything but their own brood? Can it be anything but brutality? On that at least they’re united! That at least Is their bean soup, their calm bread and a few luxuries! “But in me, more sensitive, marvelous old queen It sank deep into the blood, that I rose upon The tense air enjoying the dusty fight! Heavy drink were the low, sloping foreheads The flat skulls with the unkempt black or blond hair, The ugly legs of the young girls, pistons Too powerful for delicacy! The women’s wrists, the men’s arms, red Used to heat and cold, to toss quartered beeves And barrels, and milk-cans, and crates of fruit! “Faces all knotted up like burls on oaks, Grasping, fox-snouted, thick-lipped, Sagging breasts and protruding stomachs, Rasping voices, filthy habits with the hands. “Nowhere you! Everywhere the electric! “Ugly, venemous, gigantic! Tossing me as a great father his helpless Infant till it shriek with ecstasy And its eyes roll and its tongue hangs out!-- “I am at peace again, old queen, I listen clearer now.” ABROAD Never, even in a dream, Have I winged so high nor so well As with her, she leading me by the hand, That first day on the Jersey mountains! And never shall I forget The trembling interest with which I heard Her voice in a low thunder: “You are safe here. Look child, look open-mouth! The patch of road between the steep bramble banks; The tree in the wind, the white house there, the sky! Speak to men of these, concerning me! For never while you permit them to ignore me In these shall the full of my freed voice Come grappling the ear with intent! Never while the air’s clear coolness Is seized to be a coat for pettiness; Never while richness of greenery Stands a shield for prurient minds; Never, permitting these things unchallenged Shall my voice of leaves and varicolored bark come free through!” At which, knowing her solitude, I shouted over the country below me: “Waken! my people, to the boughs green With ripening fruit within you! Waken to the myriad cinquefoil In the waving grass of your minds! Waken to the silent phoebe nest Under the eaves of your spirit!” But she, stooping nearer the shifting hills Spoke again. “Look there! See them! There in the oat field with the horses, See them there! bowed by their passions Crushed down, that had been raised as a roof beam! The weight of the sky is upon them Under which all roof beams crumble. There is none but the single roof beam: There is no love bears against the great firefly! At this I looked up at the sun Then shouted again with all the might I had. But my voice was a seed in the wind. Then she, the old one, laughing Seized me and whirling about bore back To the city, upward, still laughing Until the great towers stood above the marshland Wheeling beneath: the little creeks, the mallows That I picked as a boy, the Hackensack So quiet that seemed so broad formerly: The crawling trains, the cedar swamp on the one side-- All so old, so familiar--so new now To my marvelling eyes as we passed Invisible. SOOTHSAY Eight days went by, eight days Comforted by no nights, until finally: “Would you behold yourself old, beloved?” I was pierced, yet I consented gladly For I knew it could not be otherwise. And she--“Behold yourself old! Sustained in strength, wielding might in gript surges! Not bodying the sun in weak leaps But holding way over rockish men With fern free fingers on their little crags, Their hollows, the new Atlas, to bear them For pride and for mockery! Behold Yourself old! winding with slow might-- A vine among oaks--to the thin tops: Leaving the leafless leaved, Bearing purple clusters! Behold Yourself old! birds are behind you. You are the wind coming that stills birds, Shakes the leaves in booming polyphony-- Slow, winning high way amid the knocking Of boughs, evenly crescendo, The din and bellow of the male wind! Leap then from forest into foam! Lash about from low into high flames Tipping sound, the female chorus-- Linking all lions, all twitterings To make them nothing! Behold yourself old!” As I made to answer she continued, A little wistfully yet in a voice clear cut: “Good is my over lip and evil My underlip to you henceforth: For I have taken your soul between my two hands And this shall be as it is spoken.” ST. JAMES’ GROVE And so it came to that last day When, she leading by the hand, we went out Early in the morning, I heavy of heart For I knew the novitiate was ended The ecstasy was over, the life begun. In my woolen shirt and the pale blue necktie My grandmother gave me, there I went With the old queen right past the houses Of my friends down the hill to the river As on any usual day, any errand. Alone, walking under trees, I went with her, she with me in her wild hair, By Santiago Grove and presently She bent forward and knelt by the river, The Passaic, that filthy river. And there dabbling her mad hands, She called me close beside her. Raising the water then in the cupped palm She bathed our brows wailing and laughing: “River, we are old, you and I, We are old and by bad luck, beggars. Lo, the filth in our hair, our bodies stink! Old friend, here I have brought you The young soul you long asked of me. Stand forth, river, and give me The old friend of my revels! Give me the well-worn spirit, For here I have made a room for it, And I will return to you forthwith The youth you have long asked of me: Stand forth, river, and give me The old friend of my revels!” And the filthy Passaic consented! Then she, leaping up with a fierce cry: “Enter, youth, into this bulk! Enter, river, into this young man!” Then the river began to enter my heart, Eddying back cool and limpid Into the crystal beginning of its days. But with the rebound it leaped forward: Muddy, then black and shrunken Till I felt the utter depth of its rottenness The vile breadth of its degradation And dropped down knowing this was me now. But she lifted me and the water took a new tide Again into the older experiences, And so, backward and forward, It tortured itself within me Until time had been washed finally under, And the river had found its level And its last motion had ceased And I knew all--it became me. And I knew this for double certain For there, whitely, I saw myself Being borne off under the water! I could have shouted out in my agony At the sight of myself departing Forever--but I bit back my despair For she had averted her eyes By which I knew well what she was thinking-- And so the last of me was taken. Then she, “Be mostly silent!” And turning to the river, spoke again: “For him and for me, river, the wandering, But by you I leave for happiness Deep foliage, the thickest beeches-- Though elsewhere they are all dying-- Tallest oaks and yellow birches That dip their leaves in you, mourning, As now I dip my hair, immemorial Of me, immemorial of him Immemorial of these our promises! Here shall be a bird’s paradise, They sing to you remembering my voice: Here the most secluded spaces For miles around, hallowed by a stench To be our joint solitude and temple; In memory of this clear marriage And the child I have brought you in the late years. Live, river, live in luxuriance Remembering this our son, In remembrance of me and my sorrow And of the new wandering!” * * * * * Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: con la beautitud=> con la beatitud {pg 5} a rough day to=> a rough dray to {pg 26} From which he old eyes=> From which her old eyes {pg 79} End of Project Gutenberg's Al Que Quiere!, by William Carlos Williams *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BOOK OF POEMS, AL QUE QUIERE! *** Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed. Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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