Tags
1917, 6*, astonishment, evil, good, gutter, identity, man, minister, pavement, pulpit, sound, sparrows, step, Sunday, thinking, voices, walking, William Carlos Williams, wisdom
PASTORAL
The little sparrows
hop ingenuously
about the pavement
quarreling
with sharp voices
over those things
that interest them.
But we who are wiser
shut ourselves in
on either hand
and no one knows
whether we think good
or evil.
Meanwhile,
the old man who goes about
gathering dog-lime
walks in the gutter
without looking up
as his tread
is more majestic than
that of the Episcopal minister
approaching the pulpit
of a Sunday.
These things
astonish me beyond words.
from ‘Al Que Quiere’, 1917
it was these ‘pastorals’ that made me notice: there is a way out of societal precursoring, there is a way to see other than through those bi-focal lenses; and there is a way to see that doesn’t involve a revolution, that doesn’t involve the dismantling of what is there at all, but the love and heart to accept what is really there – clean, audial and postural – once the glasses have been taken off; it takes courage, of course, because in doing so you have to dismantle all the constructs which you had thought to be your identity, and even soul – this is why you need love, in order to handle the searing wisdom you will receive, there’s no place for ‘what about me’ (in fact, WCW, in just the previous poem in the Collected (‘Apology’) talked about how it is the faces that make him write, that oblige him to see); the everything about the anything that is ever more true than any myopic and partisan specificity
————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–
identity wormhole: anxiety
sound & voices wormhole: transferring
sparrows wormhole: somewhere
Sunday wormhole: buttercups
thinking wormhole: it’s all about…;
walking & William Carolos Williams wormhole: PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams
