Now that I have cooled to you Let there be gold of tarnished masonry, Temples soothed by the sun to ruin That sleep utterly. Give me hand for the dances, Ripples at Philæ, in and out, And lips, my Lesbian, Wall flowers that once were flame.
Your hair is my Carthage And my arms the bow, And our words the arrows To shoot the stars, Who from that misty sea Swarm to destroy us.
But you there beside me--- Oh! how shall I defy you, Who wound me in the night With breasts shining like Venus and like Mars? The night that is shouting Jason When the loud eaves rattle As with waves above me, Blue at the prow of my desire.
O prayers in the dark! O incense to Poseidon! Calm in Atlantis.
From this he has, as some would say, "turned" to a sort of maximum objective reality in
Old men who have studied every leg show in the city Old men cut from touch by the perfumed music-- polished or fleeced skulls that stand before the whole theatre in silent attitudes of attention,-- old men who have taken precedence over young men and even over dark-faced husbands whose minds are a street with arc-lights. Solitary old men for whom we find no excuses....
This is less savage than "Les Assis." His "Portrait of a Woman in Bed" incites me to a comparison with Rimbaud's picture of an old actress in her "loge." Not to Rimbaud's disadvantage. I don't know that any, save the wholly initiated into the cult of anti-exoticism, would take Williams' poem for an exotic, but there is no accounting for what may occur in such cases.
There's my things drying in the corner; that blue skirt joined to the gray shirt--
I'm sick of trouble! Lift the covers if you want me and you'll see the rest of my clothes-- though it would be cold lying with nothing on!
I won't work and I've got no cash. What are you going to do about it? ----and no jewelry (the crazy fools).
But I've my two eyes and a smooth face and here's this! look! it's high! There's brains and blood in there-- my name's Robitza! Corsets can go to the devil-- and drawers along with them! What do I care!
My two boys? --they're keen! Let the rich lady care for them they'll beat the school or let them go to the gutter-- that ends trouble.
This house is empty isn't it? Then it's mine because I need it. Oh, I won't starve while there's the Bible to make them feed me.