prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1927, 7*, air, April, aspiration, bed, birds, breathing, cemetry, cherries, Christian Science, city, death, elderberry, grandmother, house, kiss, laughing, love, memory, sea, smell, speech, Spring, summer, talking, William Carlos Williams, wine

2

When I think how my grandmother flirted with me I often wonder why I have not been attracted by women of her type.   SHE was a devil if ever there was one.   When she’d move into a neighborhood she’d go out and clean it up, tonguewise.   She’d lay ’em out, male and female – and then sit back in peace to her mysterious memories and awkward aspirations toward heaven and the hold she’d have still on the world and its accessories.   She buried the keg of elderberry wine under the side of the house, and the stuff she’d eat, not to waste it, would make you shudder.   This was especially after she’d gone nearly blind and had taken up Christian Science so that you couldn’t trust her.   Boy, them was the days.   And the rags she used to wipe the dishes on when she’d have the family up to a meal in her shack on the shore over the Fourth.   Baby, I can still see Pop wiping his knife on the edge of the tablecloth – or something, before he’d use it.   But talk was her best weapon, she could lay you an argument like a steel fence and you might try to get through it for a day or a week or till doomsday and there she’d be still back of it laughing at you.   The only fault she confessed to was a lack of self-assertion.   She was right too.   She liked no society, no gadding – except on some wild pretext, such as a fascination with the bicycle at sixty.   She fell flat with the handle in one eye, but she did it, bloomers and all.   Yet she–   The city stifled her, she could not wait for the spring.   School or no school (they suffered for it later) out she would yank the two grandkids and off she’s track it for the shore, April to snowfall there she’d make her stand.   Nobody could budge her, not even old man Nolan who had his wife eating out of his hand, big and burly as she was.   He never got the best of Emily.   That was it, she had it.   She wanted to be out, away, alone, in the air, by the sea, breathing it in.   She’d lie in the water’s edge every summer’s day till she was eighty.   Sometimes she’d be so weak, all alone there, she couldn’t get up with her wet rags dragging on her.   She’d turn blue with the effort to lift herself on her hands and knees, laughing self consciously the while but doing it, doing it–   She’d envy the birds the cherries they’d eat, or she’d sit and watch them playing and go get crumbs to throw them, or half scrape a fish the boys would be too lazy to clean, disgusted with its smallness–   Lord what a bed she’d sleep in!   I would carry you away with what it had in it.   When she’d come to kiss you, you’d want to but you’d go easy and there’d be a good smell out of her scalp and up her neck–   She liked me, I’d stand up and fight her by the day trying to get her to have clean dish rags or whatever it would be – some moral issue.   All she wanted was to be alone and to have her quiet way.   She had it.   And love.   She wanted that, hot food into the grave, you couldn’t get her without it.   Took my father up to the cemetery the night before he married and made him promise her things over the grave of his dead sister.   God pardon her for it.

 

from Poems, 1927
a most vibrant biographical sketch of a person; I know her so well just from this; I wish biographical sketches of famous people were like this – sinewy fibres of life that tell no story, but reveal all that you need to know; and straight-forward language that doesn’t beguile but nonetheless jabs out into the universe

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

air & William Carlos Williams wormhole: YOUNG SYCAMORE by William Carlos Williams
birds wormhole: I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on
breathing wormhole: it’s / not what you do or what you say / if it ain’t got that swing
city wormhole: THE GREAT FIGURE by William Carlos Williams
death wormhole: on facing the Have
house wormhole: The Diligence at Louveciennes, 1870
love wormhole: and … // … sound
sea wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing
smell wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Pigs
speech wormhole: between
Spring wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
talking wormhole: ‘a blacknight fitted perfectly …’

 

Advertisement

on facing the Have

Tags

2018, 7*, being, block, blue, bone, cause and effect, change, choice, clothes, clouds, Darwin, death, depth, discipline, doing, dream, drifting, economics, emerald, extermination, faces, government, green, grey, hats, Have, head, hills, hinge, humanity, identity, iron, kiss, life, loss, making, mud, music, neck, peacock, photography, power, quotidian, river, roof, settlement, shadow, Shrewsbury, slow, society, statue, stone, streets, tectonic plates, time, trees, violence, walls, war, watching, water, woman, World War, writing

                bone to stone drifting
                catastrophic slow

                lee to face-ward drifting
                shadow to quotidian

                suggesting life
                only when settled

                under branch of roof;
                noticeable change

                comes at the price
                of sheild and pike:

                death-mask disciplined
                to the painted face

                open to the very depth
                of loss, later settled

                to economies of
                plea, barter and

                proliferation of fact
                artisaned superfluous

                to being – faces fixed
                in leer the rest of

                born days, where
                animals are skinned

                under abnegated face,
                where stone walls

                turn green, staining
                clothing and where the

                emerald poise of head
                and neck watches

                the peck of open flay, all
                “exterminated by

                 slow acting and still
                 existing causes …”

                … time begins
                to tick – well it had to

                start somewhere – and
                with time cometh writing

                and with writing the
                topography fades from

                hill-wide face to
                pock-mark street and settlement

                all fitted ingeniously
                with raised wall over arch,

                high to unresolved descant
                always left in minor;

                the woman bends
                to the laundry before

                the rush of water
                released from the mill:

                power is only explicit
                when blocked and

                channelled, tree to
                gable with date

                and signature, silk
                to valence with

                drape of repose and spreading peacock dream;
                so, is there choice

                of governance: cut
                through from neck to child;

                you stay unnatural-still
                your image will be caught,

                you turn, and your
                head will disappear,

                you climb the wall
                and stand still, you

                stay in the mud yard
                and stand still, … only

                hats stay constant, cast-
                iron flanges reach

                from cast-circular
                hinges, woven to corset,

                slave to youth; the
                memorial stone,

                painfully-carved,
                reflects the blue

                of grey cloud, under
                posts of wire

                the death-etched
                face stoops to kiss

                the face of
                wholly mud

 

291218 – spent the afternoon at the Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery to tread time from immemorial to the First World War; the quote is from “Thinking Path” by Shirley Chubb (2004), an exhibition that explores the life and legacy of Charles Darwin, an artwork and series of installations inspired by Darwin’s daily ritual of walking the same path at Down House; “Shadow Stories”, an animated short film by Samantha Moore is not directly referenced but weaves about the whole perambulation; references include the Roman conquest, medieval, Civil War, and industrial exhibits, up to the Open Art Exhibition commemorating the 100th anniversary of the First World War

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

being & clouds & doing & identity & power wormhole: The Passage of the St. Gothard, 1804
blue & woman wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams
change & streets wormhole: to let be
death wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
dream wormhole: THURSDAY by William Carlos Williams
economics & society & walls & war wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
faces wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
green & shadow & trees & writing wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
grey & time wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
Have wormhole: SPRING AND ALL VI by William Carlos Williams
life wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
music wormhole: JANUARY by William Carlos Williams
river wormhole: quiet river
roof wormhole: breakfast
stone wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
water wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams

 

What You Are by Roger McGough

Tags

1967, accident, advertising, apple, blood, books, buildings, canal, cat, cattle, children, city, clock, clouds, cuckoo, curtains, dawn, death, depth, derelict, dew, distance, duty, eyes, feet, fish, flesh, flowers, found, frog, glasses, God, goldfish, grass, green, hands, heartbeat, Hiroshima, humanity, innocence, ivy, kiss, leaves, library, love, Lusitania, madness, measure, midnight, mirror, moment, morning, moth, mother, murder, neurosis, peace, petals, plastic, poem, politicians, power, prayer, pride, Roger McGough, rosary, sand, seeds, silence, Spring, stage, station, subconscious, sun, sword, symbol, teacher, tears, teeth, time, torpedo, treason, trees, van Gogh, voices, walls, war, water, waves, wind, windows, winter, womb, world, World War, yellow

                What You Are

                you are the cat’s paw
                among the silence of midnight goldfish

                you are the waves
                which cover my feet like cold eiderdowns

                you are the teddybear (as good as new)
                found beside a road accident

                you are the lost day
                in the life of a child murderer

                you are the underwatertree
                around which fish swirl like leaves

                you are the green
                whose depths I cannot fathom

                you are the clean sword
                that slaughtered the first innocent

                you are the blind mirror
                before the curtains are drawn back

                you are the drop of dew on a petal
                before the clouds weep blood

                you are the sweetfresh grass that goes sour
                and rots beneath children’s feet

                you are the rubber glove
                dreading the surgeon’s brutal hand

                you are the wind caught on barbed wire
                and crying out against war

                you are the moth
                entangled in a crown of thorns

                you are the apple for teacher
                left in a damp cloakroom

                you are the smallpox injection
                glowing on the torchsinger’s arm like a swastika

                you are the litmus leaves
                quivering on the suntan trees

                you are the ivy
                which muffles my walls

                you are the first footprints in the sand
                on bankholiday morning

                you are the suitcase full of limbs
                waiting in a leftluggage office
                to be collected like an orphan

                you are a derelict canal
                where the tincans whistle no tunes

                you are the bleakness of winter before the cuckoo
                catching its feathers on a thornbush
                heralding spring

                you are the stillness of Van Gogh
                before he painted the yellow vortex of his last sun

                you are the still grandeur of the Lusitania
                before she tripped over the torpedo
                and laid a world war of american dead
                at the foot of the blarneystone

                you are the distance
                between Hiroshima and Calvary
                measured in mother’s kisses

                you are the distance
                between the accident and the telephone box
                measured in heartbeats

                you are the distance
                between power and politicians
                measured in half-masts

                you are the distance
                between advertising and neuroses
                measured in phallic symbols

                you are the distance
                between you and me
                measured in tears

                you are the moment
                before the noose clenched its fist
                and the innocent man cried: treason

                you are the moment
                before the warbooks in the public library
                turned into frogs and croaked khaki obscenities

                you are the moment
                before the buildings turned into flesh
                and windows closed their eyes

                you are the moment
                before the railwaystations burst into tears
                and the bookstalls picked their noses

                you are the moment
                before the buspeople turned into teeth
                and chewed the inspector
                for no other reason than he was doing his duty

                you are the moment
                before the flowers turned into plastic and melted
                in the heat of the burning cities

                you are the moment
                before the blindman puts on his dark glasses

                you are the moment
                before the subconscious begged to be left in peace

                you are the moment
                before the world was made flesh

                you are the moment
                before the clouds became locomotives
                and hurtled headlong into the sun

                you are the moment
                before the spotlight moving across the darkened stage
                like a crab finds the singer

                you are the moment
                before the seed nestles in the womb

                you are the moment
                before the clocks had nervous breakdowns
                and refused to keep pace with man’s madness

                you are the moment
                before the cattle were herded together like men

                you are the moment
                before God forgot His lines

                you are the moment of pride
                before the fiftieth bead

                you are the moment
                before the poem passed peacefully away at dawn
                like a monarch

 

from The Mersey Sound, 1967
when I first read this poem in 1978 I was too young to let go associations enough to get the metaphor; after a lifetime of being obligated to associations which stood idly by while I wildly floundered without ground, I can let them go with glee and relish and relish the metaphors to the portrait’s content (… still not sure about the ‘lost day of the child murderer’, however, and I’m still not sure why I’m not sure, but I’m not; but I can’t think McGough just slipped up over one couplet … (and I can’t find any discussion of this line in the pages-that-proliferate-like-spores-wafted-across-their-own-private-amphitheatres))

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

books & love wormhole: `whappn’d!
buildings wormhole: cowled
city & windows wormhole: moon- // washed
clouds & green & silence & time & wind wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
curtains wormhole: ‘the Bat-Signal …’
dawn wormhole: between
death wormhole: beguiled / desire
eyes wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
feet wormhole: ‘oh my girls and muse …’
glasses wormhole: … the underleaves show
hands & water & world wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
leaves wormhole: sufficiently away
library wormhole: two profiles
mirror wormhole: DANSE RUSSE by William Carlos Williams
morning wormhole: TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE by William Carlos Williams
mother wormhole: granny
power wormhole: I
Spring & sun wormhole: SPRING STRAINS by William Carlos Williams
trees & voices & yellow wormhole: TREES by William Carlos Williams
walls wormhole: both modern and en-slaved / to life
war wormhole: to arms, then;
waves wormhole: Khandro Tsering Chodron
winter wormhole: where did the silence go

 

Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – introdepthion

Tags

2016, contact, currents, dark, diagram, floating, growth, identity, kiss, knowledge, life, light, London, movement, opening, pattern, perspective, petals, roots, soil, stanza, surface, swimming, the Boats of Vallisneria, uncle, vallisneria, waiting, war, water, waves, work, writing

 

 

 

                                introdepthion

                                filigree roots dissimulate the soil
                                at the bottom of shallow waters
                                (like a diagram – no contact, with
                                 sheath of border); a stalk will grow

                                through water, sure twists towards
                                the light; on the surface petals will
                                open wide without shame and wait
                                for the floret to rise from the bract

                                then release just three boats for to
                                float the potent cargo where the
                                movement of water will hazard the
                                inexorable kiss; but there is no

                                morphology or physiology of
                                vallisneria, only certain quest from
                                darkness to light, and the surface-
                                knowledge retrieved back; I am

                                a Londoner born through war to
                                work the land to look for pattern in
                                life to make, trusting it is there to
                                swim through, but lost in currents

                                to and `fro with only adventitious
                                and god-like perspective when I
                                contemplate in four-line stanza …
                                sometimes

 

read the collected work as it is published: here
this is an appliquiary to : The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Introduction

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

1967 & life & uncle & work wormhole: The Boats of Vallesneria by Michael J. Redford – Autumn Thoughts
identity & knowledge & light & London & water & writing wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Introduction
waiting wormhole: and that’s where I are
war wormhole: the coming of ‘The Boats of Vallisneria’ by Michael J. Redford
waves wormhole: Quiver of / Tiffany – poewieview #20

 

The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Introduction

Tags

1967, being, consciousness, countryside, dark, experience, farm, flower, garden, identity, kiss, knowledge, life, light, living, London, mind, now, pattern, petals, plants, pond, the Boats of Vallisneria, thought, uncle, unconscious, vallisneria, water, writing

 

INTRODUCTION

The Boats of Vallisneria.   Not the fishing fleet of some remote principality or the landing forces of an invading alien.   Vallisneria is an aquatic plant, the roots of which grow in the soil at the bottom of shallow waters.   The pistillate flower is found at the top of a long stalk which grows up through the water towards the light of day.   Upon reaching the surface, the petals unfold in sheer abandonment to expose the stigmas that await the procreative advances of its male counterpart which is the staminate floret that grows below the surface in a large bract.   When ripe, it emerges and floats to the top where three small petals unfold and curl back to produce the three tiny boats that keep the stamens afloat where, through the movement of the water, the stamens gently kiss the stigmas of the awaiting flower in that final act of consummation.

But this small volume does not concern itself with the morphology or physiology of vallisneria or that of any other flower, in fact there is no direct connection between the title of this book and its contents.   Suffice it to say that the mind is a pond, but a pond of such depth that the sediment of our experiences lays in the bottom in utter darkness.   Every so often a thought is born and speeds hastily from the soil in which it grows to the light of consciousness.   After a brief spell of blossoming the flower returns to the depths taking with it a little food that is the knowledge of the eternal ‘now’.

I am a farm labourer, not because I was born to it (for I am a Londoner by birth) but because I desired from an early age a completion of my being that I knew I could not attain in the artifices of town life.   But soon I fear I shall be leaving the farming life, not through desire or choice, but through the evolvement of that particular pattern that is laid down for each and every one of us, the unalterable pattern that we must all follow no matter how limitless our own personal bounds of freedom.   I shall however, still be living in the countryside and will retain the sense of fulfilment this way of life has afforded me until the end of my days, no matter where I go or what I do in the years to come.

It was while gazing vacantly at a pool one evening two years ago that I first beheld the boats of vallisneria and thought of them as random thoughts released from the depths of the mind for brief spells in the light of consciousness, and it was then that I decided to capture these thoughts and to the best of my ability place them on paper.   This small book then, is a collection of thoughts, a collection of the reflections of a farm labourer who has reaped more than corn from his own particular way of life.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

1967 & mind & uncle wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Contents
being & identity wormhole: zero
garden & life & London & writing wormhole: the coming of ‘The Boats of Vallisneria’ by Michael J. Redford
knowledge wormhole: B le tch l ey P ark
light wormhole: like ink – poewieview #23
living wormhole: balancing // with a whole lot of deft
thought wormhole: between thoughts
water wormhole: aghh – we’ve been infected / it’s spreading through the system / we’re losing our files … / it’s taken out the processor … / I, I can’t open with this program anymore … / it’s scanning me – / I’ve got to buy a Virus Protection Program / from it …

 

Shonagh – poewieview #17

Tags

2016, arms, balance, belly, Bowie, boy, climb, faces, girl, hair, hill, identity, kiss, muse, natural, point, portrait, sitting, sky, staring, trees, woodland

                Shonagh

                                stood up
                on the steep hill in the woods
                                arms akimbo
                to keep balance like a tree, made
                                to climb
higher with ape face and swinging blond hair grown long and hipster flares that showed her belly when she pointed earlier in the day with nothing but her upward stare            
                                sat down,
                composed with the boy because she wanted a kiss
                                who wasn’t me

 

… all because of what you are: The Prettiest Star, 1970

Read the collected movements in David Bowie: Movements in Suite Major

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

balance wormhole: row boat
Bowie & faces wormhole: Nostalgia for Samsara – poewieview #16
girl & muse wormhole: Grizedale College
hair wormhole: train journey // like a branch
hill wormhole: really
identity wormhole: really really
sitting wormhole: becoming
opening wormhole: opening
trees wormhole: the sounds of 1969 // [would have] seemed that way – poewieview #13

 

dream 260815

Tags

2015, balcony, buildings, Carol, cellar, child, dream, Genesta Road, glass, grey, hills, home, identity, kiss, life, living, looking, love, Nan, parent, path, Plumstead, promenade, purple, schoolgirls, shoes, teenagers, Thames, thinking, wandering, windows, wood, Woolwich

 

 

 

                      dream 260815

wandering about the promenade, the schoolgirls¹ urge, again, with
girly concern, for their friend, (‘am I old, should I listen to them?’),
I should speak to her, in Spanish – learn the sounds, (‘what does it
mean?’): ‘let me enclose you’; this time I will; I have demurred too long

I have said it; I find myself, returned to Genesta Road²; the frontage
rebuilt, even a storey higher, central stairwell – vertical purple glass –
where houses join, art deco³, Edinburgh rock cladding, balconies for
viewing, windows for seeing, stylish; (‘what’s happened to my home?’)

Nan⁴ opens the door, she is younger, smart, she has energy, things to
do; government grant, upgrade houses; (‘how have the rooms changed,
what is their view now?’); story: a skeleton found, (‘where?’), in her 40s
when she died, drunk, unfound, (‘in a cellar?’), (‘we haven’t got a cellar’),

(‘have we got a cellar?’); so we drive around Plumstead, Woolwich⁵, we
boat on the river; new buildings, coffee and cream block pattern, new
woodland on the hills, straight paths; I am looking after the child,
(‘Joseph?’)⁶, I love this child, I will look after him, at the swimming pool,

he jumps into a pool, it is deep, he goes under, arms asplay, I jump in,
save him, no panic, hold his soft body; we make to the paddling pool,
teenage boys sit around, various grey jackets with label design, sullen,
defiant, looking; they sit on the edge, put on their shoes, water has

drained: platforms, winkle-pickers, creepers, suede, chains; mud on the
tiles; I make the stand¹, I hold my child, they should not do this: they leave,
slowly, I am now marked; I hand the child back to his parents, I kiss his
head, I’ll see him again; we are coming home now, Carol⁷ smiles at my love

 

1. I am a teacher
2. my teenage home
3. there are somewhat famous examples of art deco terraces further up the road at 85-91, designed by Berthold Lubetkin
4. my grandmother (1906-1989), helped bring me up as a teen
5. SE London, where I grew up
6. my eldest son
7. my lovely wife

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

buildings & glass & Thames wormhole: that comicbookshop in dreams,
Carol & dream & life & looking & Woolwich wormhole: dream 230315
child wormhole: … back to the outbreath
Genesta Road wormhole: Jackie’s slight smile
grey wormhole: Ashdown Forest / 080213 14:47
hills wormhole: Exceat to Cuckmere Haven
identity wormhole: The Godfather III: // AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHH …
living wormhole: I can say / that I do all sorts of dance
love wormhole: I do
Nan wormhole: letters to Mum V – carrying on in duty and love
Plumstead wormhole: corner of Plum Lane / Eglinton Hill and / Shrewsbury Lane
promenade wormhole: the Last Day of Morecambe Illuminations
purple wormhole: Brugges April 2015 – looking lost
thinking wormhole: dedication
windows wormhole: House by the Railroad, 1925