Category: William Carlos Williams

The Thinker My wife’s new pink slippers have gay pompons. There is not a spot or a stain on their satin toes or their sides….

Sonnet In Search Of An Author Nude bodies like peeled logs sometimes give off a sweetest odor, man and woman under the trees in full…

Kora In Hell- Improvisations Ii 1 Why go further? One might conceivably rectify the rhythm, study all out and arrive at the perfection of a…

Apology Why do I write today? The beauty of the terrible faces of our nonentites stirs me to it: colored women day workers— old and…

The Last Words Of My English Grandmother There were some dirty plates and a glass of milk beside her on a small table near the…

Primrose Yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow! It is not a color. It is summer! It is the wind on a willow, the lap of waves, the…

Great Mullen One leaves his leaves at home beomg a mullen and sends up a lighthouse to peer from: I will have my way, yellow–A…

To A Friend Well, Lizzie Anderson! seventeen men–and the baby hard to find a father for! What will the good Father in Heaven say to…

The Corn Harvest Summer ! the painting is organized about a young reaper enjoying his noonday rest completely relaxed from his morning labors sprawled in…

Love Song I lie here thinking of you:— the stain of love is upon the world! Yellow, yellow, yellow it eats into the leaves, smears…

Classic Scene A power-house in the shape of a red brick chair 90 feet high on the seat of which sit the figures of two…

The Term A rumpled sheet Of brown paper About the length And apparent bulk Of a man was Rolling with the Wind slowly over And…

Spring And All By the road to the contagious hospital under the surge of the blue mottled clouds driven from the northeast — a cold…

Kora In Hell- Improvisations Vii 1 It is still warm enough to slip from the weeds into the lake’s edge, your clothes blushing in the…

A Love Song What have I to say to you When we shall meet? Yet— I lie here thinking of you. The stain of love…

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…

The Lonely Street School is over. It is too hot to walk at ease. At ease in light frocks they walk the streets to while…

Poem (As The Cat) As the cat climbed over the top of the jamcloset first the right forefoot carefully then the hind stepped down into…

For Viola- De Gustibus Beloved you are Caviar of Caviar Of all I love you best O my Japanese bird nest No herring from Norway…

Tract 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 Cold Night It is cold. The white moon is up among her scattered stars– like the bare thighs of the Police Sergeant’s wife–among her…

Love Love is twain, it is not single, Gold and silver mixed to one, Passion ‘tis and pain which mingle Glist’ring then for aye undone….

Children’s Games I This is a schoolyard crowded with children of all ages near a village on a small stream meandering by where some boys…

The Turtle Not because of his eyes, the eyes of a bird, but because he is beaked, birdlike, to do an injury, has the turtle…

Slow Movement All those treasures that lie in the little bolted box whose tiny space is Mightier than the room of the stars, being secret…

Kora In Hell- Improvisations I 1 Fools have big wombs. For the rest?—here is pennyroyal if one knows to use it. But time is only…

A Sort Of A Song Let the snake wait under his weed and the writing be of words, slow and quick, sharp to strike, quiet…

Waiting When I am alone I am happy. The air is cool. The sky is flecked and splashed and wound with color. The crimson phalloi…

The Hunter In The Snow The over-all picture is winter icy mountains in the background the return from the hunt it is toward evening from…

Peace On Earth The Archer is wake! The Swan is flying! Gold against blue An Arrow is lying. There is hunting in heaven– Sleep safe…

From Book I, Paterson Paterson lies in the valley under the Passaic Falls its spent waters forming the outline of his back. He lies on…

Thursday I have had my dream–like others– and it has come to nothing, so that I remain now carelessly with feet planted on the ground…

The Dance In Breughel’s great picture, The Kermess, the dancers go round, they go round and around, the squeal and the blare and the tweedle…

March I Winter is long in this climate and spring–a matter of a few days only,–a flower or two picked from mud or from among…

Blizzard Snow falls: years of anger following hours that float idly down — the blizzard drifts its weight deeper and deeper for three days or…

The Spring Storm The sky has given over its bitterness. Out of the dark change all day long rain falls and falls as if it…

Queen Anne’s Lace Her body is not so white as anemone petals nor so smooth–nor so remote a thing. It is a field of the…

January Morning I I have discovered that most of the beauties of travel are due to the strange hours we keep to see them: the…

A Goodnight Go to sleep–though of course you will not– to tideless waves thundering slantwise against strong embankments, rattle and swish of spray dashed thirty…

Willow Poem It is a willow when summer is over, a willow by the river from which no leaf has fallen nor bitten by the…

The Ivy Crown The whole process is a lie, unless, crowned by excess, It break forcefully, one way or another, from its confinement— or find…

Pastoral The little sparrows hop ingenuously about the pavement quarreling with sharp voices over those things that interest them. But we who are wiser shut…

Flowers By The Sea When over the flowery, sharp pasture’s edge, unseen, the salt ocean lifts its form-chicory and daisies tied, released, seem hardly flowers…

The Young Housewife At ten AM the young housewife moves about in negligee behind the wooden walls of her husband’s house. I pass solitary in…

The Artist Mr T. bareheaded in a soiled undershirt his hair standing out on all sides stood on his toes heels together arms gracefully for…

Light Hearted William Light hearted William twirled his November moustaches and, half dressed, looked from the bedroom window upon the spring weather. Heigh-ya! sighed he…

Blueflags I stopped the car to let the children down where the streets end in the sun at the marsh edge and the reeds begin…

The Spouts In this world of as fine a pair of breasts as ever I saw the fountain in Madison Square spouts up of water…

Romance Moderne Tracks of rain and light linger in the spongy greens of a nature whose flickering mountain–bulging nearer, ebbing back into the sun hollowing…

It Is a Small Plant It is a small plant delicately branched and tapering conically to a point, each branch and the peak a wire…

A Celebration A middle-northern March, now as always– gusts from the South broken against cold winds– but from under, as if a slow hand lifted…

Youth And Beauty I bought a dishmop– having no daughter– for they had twisted fine ribbons of shining copper about white twine and made a…

The Hunter In the flashes and black shadows of July the days, locked in each other’s arms, seem still so that squirrels and colored birds…

Overture To A Dance Of Locomotives Men with picked voices chant the names of cities in a huge gallery: promises that pull through descending stairways…

Election Day Warm sun, quiet air an old man sits in the doorway of a broken house– boards for windows plaster falling from between the…

These are the desolate, dark weeks when nature in its barrenness equals the stupidity of man. The year plunges into night and the heart plunges…

The Birds The world begins again! Not wholly insufflated the blackbirds in the rain upon the dead topbranches of the living tree, stuck fast to…

Light Hearted Author The birches are mad with green points the wood’s edge is burning with their green, burning, seething–No, no, no. The birches are…

Berket And The Stars A day on the boulevards chosen out of ten years of student poverty! One best day out of ten good ones….

The Shadow Soft as the bed in the earth Where a stone has lain— So soft, so smooth and so cool, Spring closes me in…