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The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
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I will teach you my townspeople
how to
perform a funeral
for you have it over a troop
of artists-
unless one should scour the world-
you have the ground
sense necessary.
See! the hearse leads.
I begin with a design for a hearse.
For Christ's sake not black-
nor
white either - and not polished!
Let it be whethered - like a farm wagon -
with gilt wheels (this could be
applied
fresh at small expense)
or no wheels at all:
a rough dray to drag over the ground.
Knock the glass out!
My
God - glass, my townspeople!
For what purpose? Is it for the dead
to look out or for us to see
the flowers or the
lack of them -
or what?
To keep the rain and snow from him?
He will have a heavier rain soon:
pebbles and dirt
and what not.
Let there be no glass -
and no upholstery, phew!
and no little brass rollers
and small easy wheels
on the bottom -
my townspeople, what are you thinking of?
A rough plain hearse then
with gilt wheels and no top at
all.
On this the coffin lies
by its own weight.
No wreathes please-
especially no hot house flowers.
Some
common memento is better,
something he prized and is known by:
his old clothes - a few books perhaps -
God knows
what! You realize
how we are about these things
my townspeople -
something will be found - anything
even flowers
if he had come to that.
So much for the hearse.
For heaven's sake though see to the driver!
Take off the silk
hat! In fact
that's no place at all for him -
up there unceremoniously
dragging our friend out to his own dignity!
Bring
him down - bring him down!
Low and inconspicuous! I'd not have him ride
on the wagon at all - damn him! -
the undertaker's
understrapper!
Let him hold the reins
and walk at the side
and inconspicuously too!
Then briefly as to yourselves:
Walk
behind - as they do in France,
seventh class, or if you ride
Hell take curtains! Go with some show
of inconvenience;
sit openly -
to the weather as to grief.
Or do you think you can shut grief in?
What - from us? We who have perhaps
nothing
to lose? Share with us
share with us - it will be money
in your pockets.
Go now
I think you are ready.
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Back to the top
To a Poor Old Woman
Munching a plum on the street a paper bag of them in her hand They taste good to her They
taste good to her. They taste good to her You can see it by the way she gives herself to the one half sucked out in her hand Comforted a solace of ripe plums seeming
to fill the air They taste good to her
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To Elsie
The pure products of America
go crazy—
mountain
folk from Kentucky
or the ribbed north end of
Jersey
with its isolate lakes and
valleys, its deaf-mutes,
thieves
old names
and promiscuity between
devil-may-care men who have taken
to railroading
out of sheer
lust of adventure—
and young slatterns, bathed
in filth
from Monday to Saturday
to be tricked out
that night
with gauds
from imaginations which have no
peasant traditions to give them
character
but flutter
and flaunt
sheer rags-succumbing without
emotion
save numbed terror
under some hedge of choke-cherry
or
viburnum-
which they cannot express—
Unless it be that marriage
perhaps
with a dash of Indian blood
will
throw up a girl so desolate
so hemmed round
with disease or murder
that she'll be rescued by an
agent—
reared
by the state and
sent out at fifteen to work in
some hard-pressed
house in the suburbs—
some doctor's
family, some Elsie—
voluptuous water
expressing with broken
brain the truth about us—
her great
ungainly
hips and flopping breasts
addressed to cheap
jewelry
and rich young men with fine eyes
as if the earth
under our feet
were
an excrement of some sky
and we degraded prisoners
destined
to hunger until we eat
filth
while the imagination strains
after deer
going by fields of goldenrod in
the stifling heat of September
Somehow
it
seems to destroy us
It is only in isolate flecks that
something
is given off
No one
to witness
and
adjust, no one to drive the car
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Classic Scene
A power-house
in the shape of
a red brick chair
90 feet high
on the seat of which
sit the figures
of two metal
stacks--aluminum--
commanding an area
of squalid shacks
side by side--
from one of which
buff smoke
streams while under
a grey sky
the other remains
passive today--
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About William's Poems
What I've noticed among many of the 85+ poems by William Carlos William's is that they're about what he sees and
feels. Many of which have to do with nature such as animals, seasons, weather, and life. Just to name a few poems that
include these characteristics are Blizzard, The Birds, and
Winter Trees. Many of which are describe what the weather is like, how animals interact, and phases of change.
Of course, William Carlos Williams' poems aren't always about nature, but some have to do with his experiences, people,
and places. Both his patients and person experience help inspire him to create his poems to what they become. He's experienced
all the seasons there are in a year and has written poems about them to give his audience the feel of what he's felt.
Some of his experiences that he's wrote about in his poems are The Thinker, in which he talks to himself about
his wife's slippers and how it catches his attention everytime he sees them. The Young Housewife is another personal
poem of William's. It's about his wife Flossie, who was much younger than he was. He also mentioned in his poem about the
fish-man who is a real person that use to sell them fish at their door. A lot of his poems have a meaning, more meaning for
William himself.
He was known to write his poems using Modernism and Imagism. This explains why a lot of his poems are more present
and unique. He doesn't talk about how things use to be, but instead he talks about what things are like which is similarly
like things are today.
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