Additional Poems By William Carlos Williams Essay, Research Paper

Transitional

First he said:

It is the woman in us

That makes us write–

Let us acknowledge it–

Men would be silent.

We are not men

Therefore we can speak

And be conscious

(of the two sides)

Unbent by the sensual

As befits accuracy.

I then said:

Dare you make this

Your propaganda?

And he answered:

Am I not I–here?

(from The Tempers, 1913)

from The Dial, August 1920

To Waken an Old Lady

Old age is

a flight of small

cheeping birds

skimming

bare trees

above a snow glaze.

Gaining and failing

they are buffeted

by a dark wind –

But what?

On harsh weedstalks

the flock has rested —

the snow

is covered with broken

see husks

and the wind tempered

with a shrill

piping of plenty

from The Dial 69 (p. 163)

The Desolate Field

Vast and grey, the sky

is a simulacrum

to all but him whose days

are vast and grey and —

In the tall, dried grasses

a goat stirs

with nozzle searching the ground.

My head is in the air

but who am I . . . ?

— and my heart stops amazed

at the thought of love

vast and grey

yearning silently over me.

from The Dial 69 (p. 164)

Blizzard

Snow falls:

years of anger following

hours that float idly down —

the blizzard

drifts its weight

deeper and deeper for three days

or sixty years, eh? Then

the sun! a clutter of

yellow and blue flakes —

Hairy looking trees stand out

in long alleys

over a wild solitude.

The man turns and there –

his solitary track stretched out

upon the world.

from The Dial 69 (p. 164)