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Nathalie's William Carlos Williams Page

Some Examples of Williams' Later Poetry

William Carlos Williams' later poetry includes the poems he wrote from 1950 to 1963.

Every Day

(from The Collected Later Poems)

(1950)

Every day that I go out to my car

I walk through a garden

and wish often that Aristotle

had gone on

to a consideration of the dithyrambic

poem--or that his notes had survived

Coarse grass mars the fine lawn

as I look about right and left

tic toc--

And right and left the leaves

upon the yearling peach grow along

the slender stem

No rose is sure. Each is one rose

and this, unlike another,

opens flat, almost as a saucer without

a cup. But it is a rose, rose

pink. One can feel it turning slowly

upon its thorny stem

The Sound of Waves

(from The Collected Later Poems)

(1950)

A quatrain? Is that

the end I envision?

Rather the pace

which travel chooses.

Female? Rather the end

of giving and receiving

--of love: love surmounted

is the incentive.

Hardly. The incentive

is nothing surmounted,

the challenge lying

elsewhere.

No end but among words

looking to the past,

Plaintive and unschooled,

wanting a discipline

But wanting

more than discipline

a rock to blow upon

as a mist blows

Or rain is driven

against some

headland jutting into

a sea--with small boats

perhaps riding under it

while the men fish

there, words blowing in

taking the shape of stone

. . . . . . . . .

Past that, past the image:

a voice!

out of the mist

above the waves and

the sound of waves, a

voice . speaking!

Song

(from Pictures from Brueghel)

(1962)

beauty is a shell

from the sea

where she rules triumphant

till loe has had its way with her

scallops and

lion's paws

sculptured to the

tune of retreating waves

undying accents

repeated till

the ear and the eye lie

down together in the same bed

The Polar Bear

(from Pictures from Brueghel)

(1962)

his coat resembles the snow

deep snow

the male snow

which attacks and kills

silently as it falls muffling

the world

to sleep that

the interrupted quiet return

to lie down with us

its arms

about our necks

murderously a little while

The Lady Speaks

(from Journey to Love)

(1955)

A storm raged among the live oaks

while my husband and I

sat in the semi-dark

listening!

We watched from the windows,

the lights off,

saw the moss

whipped upright

by the wind's force.

Two candles we had lit

side by side

before us

so solidly had our house been built

kept their tall flames

unmoved.

May it be so

when a storm sends the moss

whipping

back and forth

upright

above my head

like flames in the final

fury.

The Children

(from Pictures from Brueghel)

(1962)

Once in a while

we'd find a patch

of yellow violets

not many

but blue big blue

ones in

the cemetery woods

we'd pick

bunches of them

there was a family

named Foltette

a big family

with lots of children's graves

so we'd take

bunches of violets

and place one

on each headstone

The Painting

(from Pictures from Brueghel)

(1962)

Starting from black or

finishing

with it

her defeat stands

a delicate

lock

of blonde hair dictated

by the

Sorbonne

this was her last

clear

act

a portrait of a

child

to which

she was indifferent

beautifully

drawn

then she married and

moved to

another country

The Snow Begins

(from Pictures from Brueghel)

(1962)

A rain of bombs, well placed,

is no less lovely

but this comes gently over all

all crevices are covered

the stalks of

fallen flowers vanish before

this benefice all the garden's

wounds are healed

white, white, white as death

fallen which dignifies it as

no violece ever can

gently and silently in the night

The Fruit

(from Pictures from Brueghel)

(1962)

Waking

I was eating pears!

she said

I sat beside her on the bed

thinking

of Picasso

a portrait of

a sensitive young boy

gathered

into himself

Waking

I was eating pears!

she said

when separate jointly

we embraced

To Flossie

(from Pictures from Brueghel)

(1962)

who showed me

a bunch of garden roses

she was keeping

on ice

against an appointment

with friends

for supper

day after tomorrow

aren't they beautiful

you can't

smell them

because they're so cold

but aren't they

in wax

paper for the

moment beautiful

To My Friend Ezra Pound

(from Pictures from Brueghel)

(1962)

or he were a Jew or a

Welshman

I hope they do give you the Nobel Prize

it would serve you right

--in perpetuity

with such a name

If I were a dog

I'd sit down on a cold pavement

in the rain

to wait for a friend (and so would you)

if it so pleased me

even if it were January or Zukofsky

Your English

is not specific enough

As a writer of poems

you show yourself to be inept not to say

unsurious

The Artist

(from Pictures from Brueghel)

(1962)

Mr. T.

bareheaded

in a soiled undershirt

his hair standing out

on all sides

stood on his toes

heels together

arms gracefully

for the moment

curled above his head.

Then he whirled about

bounded

into the air

and with an entrechat

perfectly acheved

completed the figure.

My mother

Taken by surprise

where she sat

in her invalid's chair

was left speechless.

Bravo! she cried at last

and clapped her hands.

The Man's wife

came from the kitchen:

What goes on here? she said.

But the show was over.

The Orchestra

(from The Desert Music and Other Poems)

(1954)

The precise counterpart

of a cacophony of bird calls

lifting the sun almighty

into his sphere: wood-winds

clarinet and violins

sound a prolonged A!

Ah! the sun, the sun! is about to rise

and shed his beams

as he has always done

upon us all,

drudges and those

who live at ease,

women and men,

upon the old,

upon the children and the sick

who are about to die and are indeed

dead in their beds,

to whom his light

is forever lost. The cello

raises the bass note

manfully in the treble din:

Ah, ah and ah!

together, unattuned

seeking a common tone.

Love is that common tone

shall raise his fiery head

and sound his note.

athe purpose of an orchestra

is to organize those sounds

and hold them

to an assembled order .

in spite of the

"wrong note." Well, shall we

think or listen? Is there a sound addressed

not wholly to the ear?

We half close

our eyes. We do not

hear it through our eyes.

It is not

a flute note either, it is the relation

of a flute note

to a drum. I am wide

awake. The mind

is listening. The ear

is alerted. But the ear

in a half-reluctant mood

stretches

. . and yawns.

And so the banked violind

in three tiers

enliven the scene,

pizzicato. For a short

memory or to

make the listener listen

the theme is repeated

stressing a variant:

it is a principle of music

to repeat the theme. Repeat

and repeat again,

as the pace mounts. The

theme is difficult .

but no more difficult

than the facts to be

resolved. Repeat

and repeat the theme

and all it develops to be

until thought is dissolved

in tears.

Our dreams

have been assaulted

by a memry that will not

sleep. The

French horns

interpose

. . their voices:

I love you. My heart

is innocent. And this

the first day of the world!

Say to them:

"Man has survived hitherto because he was too ignorant

to know how to realize his wishes. Now that he can realize

them, he must either change them or perish."

Now is the time .

in spite of the "wrong note"

I love you. My heart is

innocent.

And this is the first

(and last) day of the world

The birds twitter now anew

but a design

surmounts their twittering.

It is a design of a man

that makes them twitter.

It is a design.