Selected Poems

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 rank, disheveled bed-- Wrinkled and nearly blind she lay and snored rousing with anger in her tones to cry for food, Gimme something to eat-- They're starving me-- I'm all right--I won't go to the hospital. No, no, no Give me something to eat! Let me take you to the hospital, I said and after you are well you can do as you please. She smiled, Yes you do what you please first then I can do what I please-- Oh, oh, oh! she cried as the ambulance men lifted her to the stretcher-- Is this what you call making me comfortable? By now her mind was clear-- Oh you think you're smart you young people, she said, but I'll tell you you don't know anything. Then we started. On the way we passed a long row of elms. She looked at them awhile out of the ambulance window and said, What are all those fuzzy looking things out there? Trees? Well, I'm tired of them and rolled her head away.

When I was young and miserable and pretty And poor, I'd wish What all girls wish: to have a husband, A house and children. Now that I'm old, my wish Is womanish: That the boy putting groceries in my car See me.

At our age the imagination                  across the sorry facts                                   lifts us to make roses              stand before thorns.                               Sure love is cruel                   and selfish                                   and totally obtuse— at least, blinded by the light,                  young love is.                                       But we are older, I to love                and you to be loved,                            we have, no matter how,                         by our wills survived                                           to keep the jeweled prize                 always                               at our finger tips. We will it so                    and so it is                                       past all accident.  from “Journey to Love

they are mystified by certain instances.

Observe the jasmine lightness of the moon.

The greatness of a poet is not to be measured by the scale but by the intensity and the perfection of his works. Also by his vivacity. Williams is the author of the most vivid poems of modern American poetry.

I have found that Lost World in the Lost and Found Columns whose gray illegible advertisements My soul has memorized world after world: LOST - NOTHING. STRAYED FROM NOWHERE. NO REWARD.

Sun benches at the curb bespeak another season, truncated poplars that having served for shade served also later for the fire.

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.