William Carlos Williams

All the complicated details of the attiring and the disattiring are completed! A liquid moon moves gently among the long branches. Thus having prepared their buds against a sure winter the wise trees stand sleeping in the cold.

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.

The pure products of America go crazy— mountain folk from Kentucky or the ribbed north end of Jersey with its isolate lakes and valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves old names and promiscuity between devil-may-care men who have taken to railroading out of sheer lust of adventure— and young slatterns, bathed in filth from Monday to Saturday to be tricked out that night with gauds from imaginations which have no peasant traditions to give them character but flutter and flaunt sheer rags—succumbing without emotion save numbed terror under some hedge of choke-cherry or viburnum— which they cannot express— Unless it be that marriage perhaps with a dash of Indian blood will throw up a girl so desolate so hemmed round with disease or murder that she'll be rescued by an agent— reared by the state and sent out at fifteen to work in some hard-pressed house in the suburbs— some doctor's family, some Elsie— voluptuous water expressing with broken brain the truth about us— her great ungainly hips and flopping breasts addressed to cheap jewelry and rich young men with fine eyes as if the earth under our feet were an excrement of some sky and we degraded prisoners destined to hunger until we eat filth while the imagination strains after deer going by fields of goldenrod in the stifling heat of September Somehow it seems to destroy us It is only in isolate flecks that something is given off No one to witness and adjust, no one to drive the car

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations munching a plum on the street a paper bag of them in her hand They taste good to her They taste good to her. They taste good to her You can see it by the way she gives herself to the one half sucked out in her hand Comforted Comforted When originally published in the journal Smoke(Autumn 1934), the line read: “Comforted, Relieved—” a solace of ripe plums seeming to fill the air They taste good to her

I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold

Nude bodies like peeled logs sometimes give off a sweetest odor, man and woman under the trees in full excess matching the cushion of aromatic pine-drift fallen threaded with trailing woodbine a sonnet might be made of it Might be made of it! odor of excess odor of pine needles, odor of peeled logs, odor of no odor other than trailing woodbine that has no odor, odor of a nude woman sometimes, odor of a man.

so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens

Her body is not so white as anemony petals nor so smooth—nor so remote a thing. It is a field of the wild carrot taking the field by force; the grass does not raise above it. Here is no question of whiteness, white as can be, with a purple mole at the center of each flower. Each flower is a hand’s span of her whiteness. Wherever his hand has lain there is a tiny purple blemish. Each part is a blossom under his touch to which the fibres of her being stem one by one, each to its end, until the whole field is a white desire, empty, a single stem, a cluster, flower by flower, a pious wish to whiteness gone over— or nothing.

Now that I have cooled to you Let there be gold of tarnished masonry, Temples soothed by the sun to ruin That sleep utterly. Give me hand for the dances, Ripples at Philae, in and out, And lips, my Lesbian, Wall flowers that once were flame. Your hair is my Carthage And my arms the bow, And our words arrows To shoot the stars Who from that misty sea Swarm to destroy us. But you there beside me— Oh how shall I defy you, Who wound me in the night With breasts shining Like Venus and like Mars? The night that is shouting Jason When the loud eaves rattle As with waves above me Blue at the prow of my desire.

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.