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Read Ebook: A Book of Poems Al Que Quiere! by Williams William Carlos
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Ebook has 330 lines and 22371 words, and 7 pages
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.
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
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.
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. Phoebus! 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 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
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