Youth And Beauty by William Carlos Williams
I bought a dishmop— having no daughter— for they had twisted fine ribbons of shining copper about white twine and made a tousled head of it, fastened it upon a turned ash stick slender at the neck straight, tall— when tied upright on the brass wallbracket to be a light for me and naked as […]
Heel & Toe To The End by William Carlos Williams
Gagarin says, in ecstasy, he could have gone on forever he floated at and sang and when he emerged from that one hundred eight minutes off the surface of the earth he was smiling. Then he returned to take his place among the rest of us from all that division and subtraction a measure to […]
from Book I, Paterson by William Carlos Williams
Paterson lies in the valley under the Passaic Falls its spent waters forming the outline of his back. He lies on his right side, head near the thunder of the waters filling his dreams! Eternally asleep, his dreams walk about the city where he persists incognito. Butterflies settle on his stone ear. Immortal he neither […]
Flowers By The Sea by William Carlos Williams
When over the flowery, sharp pasture’s edge, unseen, the salt ocean lifts its form-chicory and daisies tied, released, seem hardly flowers alone but color and the movement-or the shape perhaps-of restlessness, whereas the sea is circled and sways peacefully upon its plantlike stem ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, […]
Dedication For A Plot Of Ground by William Carlos Williams
This plot of ground facing the waters of this inlet is dedicated to the living presence of Emily Dickinson 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 […]
Danse Russe by William Carlos Williams
If 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 dance naked, grotesquely before my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing softly to myself: “I am lonely, lonely, I was […]
Complete Destruction by William Carlos Williams
It was an icy day. We buried the cat, then took her box and set fire to it in the back yard. Those fleas that escaped earth and fire died by the cold. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — the […]
Complaint by William Carlos Williams
They call me and I go. It is a frozen road past midnight, a dust of snow caught in the rigid wheeltracks. The door opens. I smile, enter and shake off the cold. Here is a great woman on her side in the bed. She is sick, perhaps vomiting, perhaps laboring to give birth to […]
Children’s Games by William Carlos Williams
I This is a schoolyard crowded with children of all ages near a village on a small stream meandering by where some boys are swimming bare-ass or climbing a tree in leaf everything is motion elder women are looking after the small fry a play wedding a christening nearby one leans hollering into an empty […]
Blizzard by William Carlos Williams
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 […]
Berket And The Stars by William Carlos Williams
A day on the boulevards chosen out of ten years of student poverty! One best day out of ten good ones. Berket in high spirits—”Ha, oranges! Let’s have one!” And he made to snatch an orange from the vender’s cart. Now so clever was the deception, so nicely timed to the full sweep of certain […]
Aux Imagistes by William Carlos Williams
I think I have never been so exalted As I am now by you, O frost bitten blossoms, That are unfolding your wings From out the envious black branches. Bloom quickly and make much of the sunshine The twigs conspire against you Hear them! They hold you from behind You shall not take wing Except […]
Arrival by William Carlos Williams
And yet one arrives somehow, finds himself loosening the hooks of her dress in a strange bedroom- feels the autumn dropping its silk and linen leaves about her ankles. The tawdry veined body emerges twisted upon itself like a winter wind . . . ! ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem […]
April Is The Saddest Month by William Carlos Williams
There they were stuck dog and bitch halving the compass Then when with his yip they parted oh how frolicsome she grew before him playful dancing and how disconsolate he retreated hang-dog she following through the shrubbery ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. […]
Après le Bain by William Carlos Williams
I gotta buy me a new girdle. (I’ll buy you one) O.K. (I wish you’d wig- gle that way for me, I’d be a happy man) I GOTTA wig- gle for this. (You pig) ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — […]
Approach Of Winter by William Carlos Williams
The half-stripped trees struck by a wind together, bending all, the leaves flutter drily and refuse to let go or driven like hail stream bitterly out to one side and fall where the salvias, hard carmine— like no leaf that ever was— edge the bare garden. ————— The End And that’s the End of the […]
A Sort Of A Song by William Carlos Williams
Let the snake wait under his weed and the writing be of words, slow and quick, sharp to strike, quiet to wait, sleepless. —through metaphor to reconcile the people and the stones. Compose. (No ideas but in things) Invent! Saxifrage is my flower that splits the rocks. ————— The End And that’s the End of […]
A Goodnight by William Carlos Williams
Go to sleep—though of course you will not— to tideless waves thundering slantwise against strong embankments, rattle and swish of spray dashed thirty feet high, caught by the lake wind, scattered and strewn broadcast in over the steady car rails! Sleep, sleep! Gulls’ cries in a wind-gust broken by the wind; calculating wings set above […]
A Celebration by William Carlos Williams
A middle-northern March, now as always— gusts from the South broken against cold winds— but from under, as if a slow hand lifted a tide, it moves—not into April—into a second March, the old skin of wind-clear scales dropping upon the mold: this is the shadow projects the tree upward causing the sun to shine […]