THE ATTIC WHICH IS DESIRE: by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1930, 7*, attic, day, desire, light, night, poem, roof, streets, William Carlos Williams, windows

                THE ATTIC WHICH IS DESIRE:

                                the unused tent
                                of

                                bare beams
                                beyond which

                                directly wait
                                the night

                                and day–
                                Here

                                from the street
                                by

                                   *   *   *
                                   *   S   *
                                   *   O  *
                                   *   D  *
                                   *   A  *
                                   *   *   *

                                ringed with
                                running lights

                                the darkened
                                pane

                                exactly
                                down the center

                                is
                                transfixed

 

from Poems, 1930: the word becomes the poem, nothing beyond the word itself – cf. * SODA * – but everything in it just the same; WCW was an atomist, a catalyst and maybe, even, an alchemist, but he was not a dogmatist or a fantasist and definitely not a rhapsodist, although he was a poet, and very often-enough, didn’t know it

 

 

^{————w}(O)_{rmholes________________________________|—–}

light & windows wormhole: window
night & william Carlos Williams wormhole: 11/1 by William Carlos Williams
roof wormhole: Cote des Bœufs à l’Hermitage, Pontoise, 1877
streets wormhole: Great Bridge, Rouen, 1896

 

Advertisements

window

Tags

1830, 2019, 5*, artist, creak, crystal, fire, light, painting, silence, silhouette, sound, standing, Turner, windows

                oh,
                the Artist stood

                only he
                in silhouette

                daubing;
                his Admirers reclined

                or leant
                and all was silent

                save a creak
                and a lap of flame

                and the
                incandescent crystal

                of light
                around the floor-to-ceiling

                window

 

the sounds of light downloaded from Petworth: the Artist and his Admirers (the old library), c. 1830 by William Turner; when light enters through windows it turns to music if there is an alert-enough artist to express it and an audience-enough to hear

 

 

^{————w}(O)_{rmholes________________________________|—–}

light & silence wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Rain
silhouette & sound wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
windows wormhole: “And anger it is that lays in ruins / every kind of mental goodness.”

 

“And anger it is that lays in ruins / every kind of mental goodness.”

Tags

2019, 6*, anger, animals, architecture, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, collapse, corner, dream, fireplace, lintel, moss, pediment, pillars, ruin, settlement, sound, stone, thought, trees, walls, weight, windows

                                “And anger it is that lays in ruins
                                  every kind of mental goodness.”

                crunch what have I stepped on
                cracked, hollow, all about, what

                is this square stone pediment
                skewed and in the way, no, not

                square, this moss has rounded
                the corner, and here is a

                pillar (where’s the arch, where’s
                the other pillar) all concussed

                and made of cone it seems,
                it must have just collapsed

                one day, couldn’t hold the weight,
                maybe someone took the

                other pillar, maybe the lintel
                just shattered and got walked over;

                but no walls here, just that
                mound over there, I could

                climb the side, there are steps, oh,
                it was the fireplace, all that rubble

                has filled the hearth and …
                this was the back wall, here

                is a corner of a window space,
                but there are just trees to see

                now, was it cleared here once,
                did they keep animals milling

                about, were they comfortable,
                did they have dreams …?

 

a wistful from Bodhisattvacharyavatara VI, verse 7: “Encountering that which I fear or do not want, and obstructed or frustrated in obtaining what I want, these provide the fuels of discontent, of unhappiness, of irritation. They smoulder and then flare-up, spreading within me. I become built-up and headstrong with anger which eats away inside and will eventually consume me and the toxic world I have created for myself.” The title-quote is from “The Nectar of Mañjuśrī’s Speech”, a commentary to the Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Kunzang Palden.

 

 

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

architecture wormhole: La Route, Effet d’Hiver, 1872
dream wormhole: on facing the Have
sound wormhole: in turgid reflection
stone & trees wormhole: Cours La Reine, Rouen, 1890
thought wormhole: in deed
walls wormhole: Female Peasant Carding, 1875
windows wormhole: threshold to behold

 

threshold to behold

Tags

1967, 2019, 8*, abandonment, alcove, being, birds, blue, books, breeze, Dad, Eglinton Hill, evening, garden, head, identity, life, meaning, openness, place, purpose, room, shoulders, skirting board, sky, son, sound, standing, text, time, trees, Victorian houses, weight, windows

                                  threshold to behold

                having persistently interrogated every alcove
                and skirting and sash-window of every room
                he could possibly have been in

                for any lead to any whereabouts, to even a
                chalk-outline, of how to be (beyond the breath
                of standing next to him in the breezy garden) –

                they were so well-moulded, fitted at perfect
                right angle, pulleys holding the weight just right
                to open, surely they would know – nothing,

                (or were they just too arcane to decode),
                the son stood before the bookshelves – how
                was it, now – legs not really astride but anyhow,

                (dangling, even), but head and shoulders alert,
                scanning the spines, weighing what each had
                to offer to respective places and times in the

                whole of a life, ah, this is the one – plucked –
                from the top of the spine, reached down; felt
                their weight, now, opened boarded covers

                (sound of crease), open at random (must of
                decades), what does the text say when
                eavesdropped unaware, has it sense, could I inhabit

                that sense enough to see what to do, to breathe
                what to be – birds take flight into the turning deep blue
                above evening trees

 

my father left his family on my eighth birthday; I’m sure he didn’t plan in that way, but that’s the day he happened to come home late again and confess that he’d been seeing someone else – I played with my new cars behind the sofa and listened to him leave, I didn’t look up so much as stare at the shape of the room as if noticing for the first time in the Victorian house on the hill where we lived; ‘I searched for form and land, for years and years I roamed’ (a no-prize to anyone who can name where these lyrics come from) looking for the direction I needed to be ‘the man of the house, now’ as someone said to me at the time; it’s only now I have retired that I realise there is no direction to go and that there is no man about the house other than saying makes it so; I still don’t look up, but am more and more sure that I don’t have to, now; still, all that browsing, plucking and hoarding over the years …

 

 

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

abandonment & Dad & life wormhole: my uncomfortable life
being wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
birds wormhole: prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams
blue & trees wormhole: Cote des Bœufs à l’Hermitage, Pontoise, 1877
books wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
breeze wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
Eglinton Hill wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
evening & time & windows wormhole: Boulevarde Montmartre, Evening Sun, 1879 // Boulevarde Montmartre at Night, 1879
garden wormhole: Landscape, Pontoise, 1875
identity wormhole: so, how long is, a piece of string?
meaning wormhole: the old man;
openness wormhole: the mantra of Maitreya
sky wormhole: Staffa Fingal’s Cave, 1832
sound wormhole: 10/28 ‘On hot days …’ by William Carlos Williams
Victorian houses wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing

 

Boulevarde Montmartre, Evening Sun, 1879 // Boulevarde Montmartre at Night, 1879

Tags

1879, 7*, axle, boulevard, burn, carriage, chimney, evening, future, horses, individualism, lives, Montmartre, night, passengers, pavement, pediment, petrol, Pissarro, shops, skyline, sun, time, windows

Boulevarde Montmartre, Evening Sun, 1879

                each atelier window
                piled up above the
                pediment line,
                shutter-shut but
                lives to be told, each
                with individual chimney

                each carriage with each
                passenger pulled by their
                own horse evenly around
                an axle; fixed,
                only the boulevard proceeds …

Boulevarde Montmartre at Night, 1879

                … through time; but at night
                the shop-fronts burn and
                ignite the petrol pavement,
                there, under the rippled
                surface, the ache of things to come

 

 

 

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

chimney wormhole: Impression of Winter: Carriage on a Country Road, 1872
evening wormhole: Puerto del Carmen
night & skyline wormhole: intent
shops wormhole: pediment to behold
sun wormhole: Staffa Fingal’s Cave, 1832
time wormhole: the old man;
windows wormhole: Female Peasant Carding, 1875

 

Female Peasant Carding, 1875

Tags

1875, 2018, 6*, air, concentration, floor, inside, light, outside, Pissarro, portrait, shade, walls, windows, woman, wool

                she carded wool
                to her light’s content

                so that the shade
                became her floor and uprights

                and the air
                became her windows

 

Female Peasant Carding, 1875 by Camille Pissarro en plein ombre

 

 

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

air wormhole: waiting to be heard
light wormhole: Staffa Fingal’s Cave, 1832
walls wormhole: the reach turned to love
windows wormhole: the old man;
woman wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams

 

the old man;

Tags

2019, 8*, bougainvillea, Buddha, hope, life, lute, meaning, ochre, old age, open, pink, politics, power, purpose, renunciation, samsara, society, the Four Signs, time, walking, wind, windows

                the old man;

                by the open window –
                air of civic celebration

                flowering deep pink
                bougainvillea on ochre

                wind, but despite
                all iron machination

                the Prince of all
                that hope could keep

                had seen that Make
                held long-together only

                with foresworn and
                decrepit elapse

                that bent walking
                could behold;

                and the borough might hold
                but there were

                further portents
                on the way and a

                fourth that
                warranted all wasteland –

                when the lute-string
                snapped

 

An old man was the first of the Four Signs that tipped the Prince to thinking that there was more to life than privileged indulgence – there was a seriousness in life to consider which his father had designed to keep from him; when the Prince had been born, there was a prophecy that he would either become a great king enjoying power and influence far beyond, even, what his father had achieved, or that he would leave home and become a seeker of deeper purpose and meaning in life, but the father could not keep all of life’s questions at bay for the rest of the Prince’s life … the other Signs were: illness, death and worldly renunciation; this encounter fore-shadowed the Prince leaving his home to search for that deeper meaning and purpose

 

 

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

Buddha wormhole: birth in the world
life & time & walking wormhole: Puerto del Carmen
meaning wormhole: to let be
ochre wormhole: every step I take
open & windows wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
pink wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
politics wormhole: how to teach
power & society wormhole: Rain, Steam and Speed – the / Great Western Railway, 1844
renunciation wormhole: and … // … sound
samsara wormhole: Batman: Oddysey
wind wormhole: {reading right to left}

 

The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1928, 6*, arms, Atlantic City, beauty, being, black, blue, candle, cheek, city, colour, communication, daisies, dress, ears, eyes, fingers, glass, green, grey, hair, hands, hips, knuckles, lips, looking, matches, mirror, mouth, movement, open, orange, others, portrait, poverty, red, reflection, ring, ruby, sea, seagull, silence, skin, sound, speech, temptation, thinking, walking, waves, white, William Carlos Williams, windows, woman, wrists, writing

                            1. THE WAITRESS

                No wit (and none needed) but
    the silence of her ways, grey eyes in
    a depth of black lashes–
    The eyes look and the look falls.

    There is no way, no way. So close
    one may feel the warmth of the cheek and yet there is
    no way.

    The benefits of poverty are a roughened skin
    of the hands, the broken
    knuckles, the stained wrists.

                Serious. Not as the others.
    All the rest are liars, all but you.
                                        Wait on us.
    Wait on us, the hair held back practically
    by a net, close behind the ears, at the sides of
    the head. But the eyes–
                            but the mouth, lightly (quickly)
    touched with rouge.

    The black dress makes the hair dark, strangely
    enough, and the white dress makes it light.
    There is a mole under the jaw, low under
    thr right ear–

                And what arms!

                                        The glassruby ring
    on the fourth finger of the left hand.

                                        –and the movements
under the scant dress as the weight of the tray
    makes the hips shift forward slightly in lifting
    and beginning to walk–

    The Nominating Committee presents the following
    resolutions, etc. etc. etc. All those
    in favor signify by saying, Aye. Contrariminded,
    No.
      Carried.
                And aye, and aye, and aye!

    And the way the bell-hop runs downstairs:
          ta tuck a
                ta tuck a
                      ta tuck a
                            ta tuck a
                                  ta tuck a
    and the gulls in the open window screaming over the slow
    break of the cold waves–

                O unlit candle with the soft white
    plume, Sunbeam Finest Safety Matches all together in
    a little box–

                And the reflections of both in
    the mirror and the reflection of the hand, writing
    writing–
                Speak to me of her!-

                –and nobody else and nothing else
    in the whole city, not an electric sign of shifting
    colors, fourfoot daisies and acanthus fronds going from
    red to orange, green to blue–forty feet across–

                                        Wait on us, wait
    on us with your momentary beauty to be enjoyed by
    none of us. Neither by you, certainly,
                                                nor by me.

 

with love from Poems, 1928

 

 

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

beauty & speech wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
being wormhole: so, how long is, a piece of string?
black wormhole: Impression of Winter: Carriage on a Country Road, 1872
blue & grey & writing wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing
city & William Carlos Williams wormhole: prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams
communication wormhole: agreed termination without prejudice
eyes wormhole: between
glass & red wormhole: travelling / back
green & woman wormhole: on facing the Have
hair wormhole: SPRING & LINES by William Carlos Williams
hands wormhole: THE LONELY STREET by William Carlos Williams
looking wormhole: waiting to be heard
mirror wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
mouth wormhole: glamour of saṃsāra
open wormhole: animus rises – powieview #37
orange & others & walking wormhole: Rain, Steam and Speed – the / Great Western Railway, 1844
reflection wormhole: I
sea & seagull & waves wormhole: Staffa Fingal’s Cave, 1832
silence & sound wormhole: Vue de Pontoise, 1873
thinking wormhole: there will be ovations
white wormhole: alabaster balustrade
windows wormhole: birth in the world

 

travelling / back

Tags

2018, 6*, Birmingham, buildings, cars, crane, crimson, custard, evening, floor, gazing, glass, glide, leaves, light, mauve, passing, phone, railings, red, reflection, seagull, smile, south, talking, traffic lights, train, travelling, voices, windows, world

                              travelling
                              back

                                under …          … the evening aisle lights
         as she gazes across                  on the tinted glass
            bites her quick                         and the passing
         flicks her phone                          crimson and custard leaves
   smile in her mouth                          turning
                she has a fixed                   while the blokes do their
shake-heads, look-down –          talking – ‘so funny’,

          —\O___

          out of Birmingham New Street
          the seagull holds the glide

          southwards over the wetted
          bitumen floors of long demolished buildings

          cars rise slowly
          to traffic lights held at bright red

          —\O___

                    mauve pilot lights into the early evening
                    the crane folded away into a four

          —\O___

                              on the regional train
                              the darkening has set in,

                              there is no outside
                              just a double world on the window

                              with occasional disembodied station lights
                              illuminating railings to go

 

went to visit my daughter in the midlands, then travelled home

 

 

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

buildings wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing
cars & voices wormhole: BLUEFLAGS by William Carlos Williams
crane wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
evening wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
glass & light & windows wormhole: birth in the world
leaves & red wormhole: The Diligence at Louveciennes, 1870
mauve wormhole: mauve
passing & travelling wormhole: horizon
reflection wormhole: ash leaves
seagull wormhole: Fishermen at Sea, 1796
smile wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams
talking wormhole: prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams
traffic lights wormhole: transferring
train wormhole: passing
world wormhole: glamour of saṃsāra

 

birth in the world

Tags

2019, 7*, air, Arya Lalitavistara, Buddha, chords, crown, dawn, distance, glass, heather, lemon, light, Maitreya, mist, note, olive, rebirth, shade, silence, storm, windows

                the air refreshed
                and folded by several
                degrees as if to storm,
                the light became

                slightly shaded as if
                through olive glass
                but remained lemon
                in the distance, the

                silence dampened
                like mist as minute
                heather flowers turned
                to dawn, and all the

                abandoned instruments,
                their boxes taut to struts,
                their strings resigned
                to tonnage, discarded

                over couches, before
                windows, each creaked
                and let a single note that
                ne’er had pitched and

                held – chords
                o’er room and vale;
                it was time the
                effervescent crown

                were passed to the
                Regent and the
                Bodhisattva take
                birth in the world

 

bevelled up and out of the Arya Lalita Vistara Nama Mahayana Sutra: before the Buddha was born a prince in a principality in India, he was residing in a heavenly realm (with the gods), but his vows and wishes over endless waves of previous lifetimes urged him to one final birth to consummate them all in Enlightenment; the Regent is Maitreya, the next Bodhisattva to take birth in this world and show Enlightenment … in future

 

 

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

air wormhole: prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams
Buddha wormhole: and … // … sound
dawn wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
glass wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
lemon wormhole: I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on
light wormhole: St. Erasmus in Bishop Islip’s Chapels, 1796
Maitreya wormhole: Prajnaparamita // Maitreya
mist wormhole: to let be
olive wormhole: coterminalism – there is nothing happens by itself, / 070118
silence wormhole: La Route, Effet d’Hiver, 1872
windows wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing