We have come far south.
Beyond here, the oldest women
shelling limas into black shawls.
Portillo scratching his name
on the walls, the slender ribbons
of piss, children patting the mud.
If we go on, we might stop
in the street in the very place
where someone disappeared
and the words Come with us! we might
hear them. If that happened, we would
lead our lives with our hands
tied together. That is why we feel
it is enough to listen
to the wind jostling lemons,
to dogs ticking across the terraces,
knowing that while birds and warmer weather
are forever moving north,
the cries of those who vanish
might take years to get here.
20th Century American poetry
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. . .!
Epitaph by William Carlos Williams
An old willow with hollow branches
slowly swayed his few high bright tendrils
and sang:
Love is a young green willow
shimmering at the bare wood’s edge.
Hero by William Carlos Williams
Fool,
put your adventures
into those things
which break ships–
not female flesh.
Let there pass
over the mind
the waters of
four oceans, the airs
of four skies!
Return hollow-bellied
keen-eyed, hard!
A simple scar or two.
Little girls will come
bringing you
roses for your button-hole.
The Poem by William Carlos Williams
It’s all in
the sound. A song.
Seldom a song. It should
be a song–made of
particulars, wasps,
a gentian–something
immediate, open
scissors, a lady’s
eyes–waking
centrifugal, centriperal
El Hombre by William Carlos Williams
It’s a strange courage
you give me ancient star:
Shine alone in the universe
toward which you lend no part!
from The Rose by William Carlos Williams
The fragility of the flower
unbruised
penetrates space.
Sonnet in Search of an Author by William Carlos Williams
Nude bodies like peeled logs
sometimes give off the sweetest
odor, man and woman
under the trees in full excess
matching the cushion of
aromatic pine-drift fallen
threaded with trailing woodbine
a sonnet might be made of it
Might be made of it! odor of excess
odor of pine needles, odor of
peeled logs, odor of no odor
other than trailing woodbine that
has no odor, odor of nude woman
sometimes, odor of man.
The Undertaking by Louise Glück
The darkness lifts, imagine, in your lifetime.
There you are–cased in clean bark you drift
through weaving rushes, fields flooded with cotton.
You are free. The river films with lilies,
shrubs appear, shoots thicken into palm. And now
all fear gives way: the light
looks after you, you feel the waves’ goodwill
as arms widen over the water; Love,
the key is turned. Extend yourself–
it is the Nile, the sun is shining,
everywhere you turn is luck.
from The Hug by Tess Gallagher
Clearly, a little permission is a dangerous thing.
But when you hug someone you want it
to be a masterpiece of connection, the way the button
on his coat will leave the imprint of
a planet on my cheek
when I walk away. When I try to find some place
to go back to.
Leonard Durso 