William Carlos Williams Quotes

Time passes and pisses on us all.

Winter Trees

All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.

Fools have big wombs.

The province of the poem is the world.
When the sun rises, it rises in the poem
and when it sets darkness comes down
and the poem is dark .

and lamps are lit, cats prowl and men
read, read–or mumble and stare
at that which their small lights distinguish
or obscure or their hands search out

in the dark. The poem moves them or
it does not move them. Faitoute, his ears
ringing . no sound . no great city,
as he seems to read–

"The rock has split, the egg has hatched, the prismatically plumed bird of life has escaped from its cage. It spreads its wings and is perched now on the peak of the huge African mountain Kilimanjaro.
Strange recompense, in the depths of our despair at the unfathomable mist into which all mankind is plunging, a curious force awakens. It is Hope long asleep, aroused once more. Wilson has taken an army of advisers and sailed for England. The ship has sunk. But the men are all good swimmers. They take the women on their shoulders and buoyed on by the inspiration of the moment they churn the free seas with their sinewy arms, like Ulysses, landing all along the European seaboard.
Yes, hope has awakened once more in men's hearts. It is NEW! Let us go forward!
The imagination, freed from the handcuffs of "Art", takes the lead! Her Feet are bare and not too delicate. In fact those who come behind her have much to think of. Hm. Let it pass."

Filth and vermin though they shock the over-nice are imperfections of the flesh closely related in the just imagination of the poet to excessive cleanliness.

Mother, who was known among her intimates as a medium, suddenly said to my father, looking right and left at Ed and me, “So these are the boys. How they have grown. Come here, my dears,” she said to us, reaching out her hands, “and let me see you!” This to her own children whom she had been caring for all day. Pop, who was accustomed to such occasions, told us gently, bewildered as we must have been, to do as we were bid — to go to Mother, which we did, one on either side. She put her hands on each of our heads and patted us with smiles of approval and loving affection. “How well they look. I am so happy.” At this Pop said to her, to his own wife, “Who is this we have the pleasure of talking to?” “Don’t you know me?” Mother answered. “Why I’m Lou Paine.

And a church spire sketched on the sky,
of sheet metal and open beams, to resemble
a church spire

But love is unworldly, and nothing comes of it but love...

To hell with you and your poetry — You will rot and be blown
through the next solar system
with the rest of the gases —

ARRIVAL 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...!

and so by
your love the very sun
itself is revived

It was too strong in the air.
I had no rest against that
springtime!
The pounding of the hoofs on the
raw sods
stayed with me half through the night.
I awoke smiling but tired.

The man of imagination who turns to art for release and fulfilment of his baby promises contends with the sky through the layers of demoded words and shapes.

The descent beckons as the ascent beckoned