Modern American Poetry I
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
William Carlos Williams
• Portrait of the artists as a man of ordinary, calm life.
Likewise, he depicted the common life of ordinary people.
• He was a pediatrician and while he was practicing medicine throughout his
career, he wrote great poetry.
• Known to be an imagist and
modernist; more imagist than
modernist.
William Carlos Williams
• For larger biographic information, visit
https://allpoetry.com/William-Carlos-Williams
• All the poems included here are in public domain. You may visit poets.org for
verification.
William Carlos Williams
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 ourselves in
On either hand And no one knows
Whether we think good Or evil.
Then again,
The old man who goes about Gathering dog lime
Walks in the gutter Without looking up And his tread
Is more majestic than
That of the Episcopal minister Approaching the pulpit
Of a Sunday.
These things
Astonish me beyond words.
William Carlos Williams
Crude Lament
Mother of flames,
The men that went ahunting Are asleep in the snow drifts.
You have kept the fire burning!
Crooked fingers that pull
Fuel from among the wet leaves, Mother of flames
You have kept the fire burning!
The young wives have fallen asleep With wet hair, weeping,
Mother of flames!
The young men raised the heavy spears And are gone prowling in the darkness.
O mother of flames,
You who have kept the fire burning!
Lo, I am helpless!
Would God they had taken me with them!
William Carlos Williams
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 for green pods, blind lanterns starting upward from the stalk each way to a pair of prickly edged blue flowerets: it is her regard, a little plant without leaves, a finished thing guarding its secret. Blue eyes—
but there are twenty looks
in one, alike as forty flowers
on twenty stems—Blue eyes
a little closed upon a wish
achieved and half lost again, stemming back, garlanded with green sacks of satisfaction gone to seed, back to a straight stem—if
one looks into you, trumpets—!
No. It is the pale hollow of desire itself counting over and over the moneys of a stale achievement. Three small lavender imploring tips below and above them two slender colored arrows of disdain with anthers
between them and
at the edge of the goblet a white lip, to drink from—!
And summer lifts her look
forty times over, forty times
over—namelessly.
William Carlos Williams
Complaint
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
a tenth child. Joy! Joy!
Night is a room darkened for lovers,
through the jalousies the sun has sent one golden needle!
I pick the hair from her eyes and watch her misery with compassion.
William Carlos Williams
Spring Storm
