Paterson (Revised Edition) by William Carlos Williams Page B

hurtling to the moon
    .     .     let me look at you (I
    said, weeping)
    Let’s take a ride around, to see what the town looks like     .
    Indifferent, the indifference of certain death
    or incident upon certain death
    propounds a riddle (in the Joyceian mode—
    or otherwise,
    it is indifferent which)
    A marriage riddle:
    So much talk of the language—when there are no
    ears.
    .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .
    What is there to say? save that
    beauty is unheeded     .     tho’ for sale and
    bought glibly enough
    But it is true, they fear
    it more than death, beauty is feared
    more than death, more than they fear death
    Beautiful thing
    —and marry only to destroy, in private, in
    their privacy only to destroy, to hide
    (in marriage)
    that they may destroy and not be perceived
    in it—the destroying
    Death will be too late to bring us aid     .
    What end but love, that stares death in the eye?
    A city, a marriage — that stares death
    in the eye
    The riddle of a man and a woman
    For what is there but love, that stares death
    in the eye, love, begetting marriage —
    not infamy, not death
    tho’ love seem to beget
    only death in the old plays, only death, it is
    as tho’ they wished death rather than to face
    infamy, the infamy of old cities     .
    .     .     .     a world of corrupt cities,
    nothing else, that death stares in the eye,
    lacking love: no palaces, no secluded gardens,
    no water among the stones; the stone rails
    of the balustrades, scooped out, running with
    clear water, no peace     .
    The waters
    are dry. It is summer, it is     .     ended
    Sing me a song to make death tolerable, a song
    of a man and a woman: the riddle of a man
    and a woman.
    What language could allay our thirsts,
    what winds lift us, what floods bear us
    past defeats
    but song but deathless song?
    The rock
    married to the river
    makes
    no sound
    And the river
    passes—but I remain
    clamant
    calling out ceaselessly
    to the birds
    and clouds
    (listening)
    Who am I?
    —the voice!
    —the voice rises, neglected
    (with its new) the unfaltering
    language. Is there no release?
    Give it up. Quit it. Stop writing.
    “Saintlike” you will never
    separate that stain of sense,
    an offense
    to love, the mind’s worm eating
    out the core, unappeased
    —never separate that stain
    of sense from the inert mass. Never.
    Never that radiance
    quartered apart,
    unapproached by symbols     .
    Doctor, do you believe in
    “the people,” the Democracy? Do
    you still believe — in this
    swill-hole of corrupt cities?
    Do you, Doctor?     Now?
    Give up
    the poem. Give up the shilly-
    shally of art.
    What can you, what
    can YOU hope to conclude —
    on a heap of dirty linen?
    — you
    a poet (ridded) from Paradise?
    Is it a dirty book? I’ll bet
    it’s a dirty book, she said.
    Death lies in wait,
    a kindly brother —
    full of the missing words,
    the words that never get said—
    a kindly brother to the poor.
    The radiant gist that
    resists the final crystallization
    .     in the pitch-blend
    the radiant gist     .
    There was an earlier day, of prismatic colors : whence to New Barbadoes came the Englishman     .
    Thus it began   .
    Certainly there is no mystery to the fact
    that C OSTS S PIRAL A CCORDING TO A R EBUS —known
    or unknown, plotted or automatic. The fact
    of poverty is not a matter of argument. Language
    is not a vague province. There is a poetry
    of the movements of cost, known or unknown   .
    The cost. The cost
    and dazzled half sleepy eyes
    Beautiful thing
    of some trusting animal
    makes a temple
    of its place of savage slaughter
    .     .     .     .     .     .
    Try another book. Break through
    the dry air of the place
    An insane god
    —nights in a brothel   .
    And if I had   .
    What then?
    —made brothels my home?
    (Toulouse