Selected Poems by William Carlos Williams

Author:William Carlos Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8112-2342-3
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 1985-08-24T16:00:00+00:00

The Storm

A perfect rainbow! a wide

arc low in the northern sky

spans the black lake

troubled by little waves

over which the sun

south of the city shines in

coldly from the bare hill

supine to the wind which

cannot waken anything

but drives the smoke from

a few lean chimneys streaming

violently southward

The Forgotten City

When with my mother I was coming down

from the country the day of the hurricane,

trees were across the road and small branches

kept rattling on the roof of the car

There was ten feet or more of water

making the parkways impassible with wind

bringing more rain in sheets. Brown torrents

gushed up through new sluices in the

valley floor so that I had to take what road

I could find bearing to the south and west,

to get back to the city. I passed through

extraordinary places, as vivid as any

I ever saw where the storm had broken

the barrier and let through

a strange commonplace: Long, deserted avenues

with unrecognized names at the corners and

drunken looking people with completely

foreign manners. Monuments, institutions

and in one place a large body of water

startled me with an acre or more of hot

jets spouting up symmetrically over it. Parks.

I had no idea where I was and promised myself

I would some day go back to study this

curious and industrious people who lived

in these apartments, at these sharp

corners and turns of intersecting avenues

with so little apparent communication

with an outside world. How did they get

cut off this way from representation in our

newspapers and other means of publicity

when so near the metropolis, so closely

surrounded by the familiar and the famous?

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