Romance Moderne
Tracks of rain and light linger in
the spongy greens of a nature whose
flickering mountain--bulging nearer,
ebbing back into the sun
hollowing itself away to hold a lake,--
or brown stream rising and falling at the roadside, turning about,
churning itself white, drawing
green in over it,--plunging glassy funnels
fall--
And--the other world--
the windshield a blunt barrier:
Talk to me. Sh! they would hear us.
--the backs of their heads facing us--
The stream continues its motion of
a hound running over rough ground.
Trees vanish--reappear--vanish:
detached dance of gnomes--as a talk
dodging remarks, glows and fades.
--The unseen power of words--
And now that a few of the moves
are clear the first desire is
to fling oneself out at the side into
the other dance, to other music.
Peer Gynt. Rip Van Winkle. Diana.
If I were young I would try a new alignment--
alight nimbly from the car, Good-bye!--
Childhood companions linked two and two
criss-cross: four, three, two, one.
Back into self, tentacles withdrawn.
Feel about in warm self-flesh.
Since childhood, since childhood!
Childhood is a toad in the garden, a
happy toad. All toads are happy
and belong in gardens. A toad to Diana!
Lean forward. Punch the steerman
behind the ear. Twirl the wheel!
Over the edge! Screams! Crash!
The end. I sit above my head--
a little removed--or
a thin wash of rain on the roadway
--I am never afraid when he is driving,--
interposes new direction,
rides us sidewise, unforseen
into the ditch! All threads cut!
Death! Black. The end. The very end--
[...] Read more
poem by William Carlos Williams
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