WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
"About a little girl"

Knowledge defeats its own end
approaching the state of heaven
when it envisions
through the glass
delicately adjusted in the
sliding tubes
                 —to prove death inevitable—
the red and blue dots
of anilene stained blood which
shout derisively at our despair

But the child
walks laughing from
room to room of her gentle home

She is eleven and
her parents love her very much

Over her
the trees hold their leaves
dripping with the rain
shining green

This afternoon she will ride in the bus
to the railroad station

There will be a locomotive
and cars and people running around—
bags to carry—The lake
beckons in the distance—
                                        But
she is an angel, already in
heaven, the earth

is a toy balloon under her feet—

with her girlish shoes she
pushes it back—
it falls away into banality—
her wrinkling brown eyes have robbed it
of its meaning—
                           It is she

The Promenader—
whom men see and do not discover—

Princess Marion
eaten by curious wrongs

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

"A Portrait in Greys"

____________________

Will it never be possible

to separate you from your greyness?

Must you be always sinking backward

into your grey-brown landscapes—and trees

always in the distance, always against a grey sky?

                          Must I be always

moving counter to you? Is there no place

where we can be at peace together

and the motion of our drawing apart

be altogether taken up?

                                       I see myself

standing upon your shoulders touching 

a grey, broken sky—

but you, weighted down with me,

yet gripping my ankles,—move

                          laboriously on,

where it is level and undisturbed by colors.

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
"About a little girl"

Knowledge defeats its own end
approaching the state of heaven
when it envisions
through the glass
delicately adjusted in the
sliding tubes
        —to prove death inevitable—
the red and blue dots
of anilene stained blood which
shout derisively at our despair

But the child
walks laughing from
room to room of her gentle home

She is eleven and
her parents love her very much

Over her
the trees hold their leaves
dripping with the rain
shining green

This afternoon she will ride in the bus
to the railroad station

There will be a locomotive
and cars and people running around—
bags to carry—The lake
beckons in the distance—
                        But
she is an angel, already in
heaven, the earth

is a toy balloon under her feet—

with her girlish shoes she
pushes it back—
it falls away into banality—
her wrinkling brown eyes have robbed it
of its meaning—
                It is she

The Promenader—
whom men see and do not discover—

Princess Marion
eaten by curious wrongs

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS - “Portent”

Red cradle of the night,
    In you
          The dusky child
Sleeps fast till his might
  Shall be piled
Sinew on sinew.

Red cradle of the night,
   The dusky child
Sleeping sits upright.
   Lo how
                   The winds blow now!
   He pillows back;
The winds are again mild.

When he stretches his arms out,
Red cradle of the night,
   The alarms shout
From bare tree to tree,
   Wild
             In afright!
Mighty shall he be,
Red cradle of the night,
   The dusky child!!