Poem #25 for Poetry Month

[nightdog_barks]

Today's poem is from the great American novelist Joyce Carol Oates (born 1938). In this she's writing about another poet, William Carlos Williams (1883 - 1963) and the effect a series of strokes had in the later years of his life. This is a lovely, luminous poem, with an unexpected twist at the end, and perhaps a promise.



This Is the Time for Which We Have Been Waiting


Dear Jim,

I #fnally got your letter enclosing your letter enclocussing your letter which was so ompportant foe me, thannkuok yuon very much. In time this fainful bsiness will will soonfeul will soon be onert.Tnany anany goodness. If S lossiee eli wyyonor wy sinfsignature.

I hope I hope I make it.

Bill





The first snowfall brings chaos.
First the horizon disappears, then
you disappear. When

William Carlos Williams suffered his first stroke
he was 68 years old, in 1951. His second,
the following year. The man loved

our American speech. Vulgar & graceless
as oversized boots he loved it. The pimply-
faced girl he loved. Forms inside things gnarly

to the touch. Smokestacks, mustard weed.
The steely river filling with acid & sparrows
picking in the dirt, like Death. Yet

still just sparrows. Beauty of marigolds,
& fried oysters. Beauty of spiderwebs,
Breughel's hunters in the snow. Except

maybe what the poet saw & heard
was in his own head! Maybe in Rutherford,
N.J. there was nothing. Maybe

he was in despair, fierce lover
of women & adulterer & this morning waking to discover
someone has dressed him in an old man's underwear -—

gunmetal-gray, woolen-itchy, soiled cuffs
at bony wrists & ankles & the crotch unsnapped.
Opens his mouth to curse

& words choke like phlegm. A doctor doesn't expect
to die like the rest of us … Waking in the sun
in Flossie's garden back of the yellow house

the terror strikes him maybe he's dreamt it all? -— male
hands lifting a thrashing bloody infant
from between female thighs, &

ironweed along the railroad embankment
tough enough to thrive in cinders, &
there he's laughing typing on the old manual

words leaping astonished out of the mute keyboard, keys
so worn you can't read the letters. And
those clouds -—

Clouds I've been noticing this morning, too.
Diesel-dirted, broken & yet dignified in motion
moving from west to east effortless above the pines

in this New Jersey smudged sky. In March 1963
the final stroke. "Died in his sleep." Eyes
moving restlessly down the naked body.

On a gurney? Since when? The shock of it, his young
male body restored. Svelte dark down of the chest,
groin & soft stirring penis. Winter-pale

haunches, muscles hard as bone. Lifts
his head. Where? Christ, he's alert, he's curious -—
ready to begin it all again -—

This is the time for which we have been waiting.



Note: The letter from William Carlos Williams to his friend and editor James Laughlin was written sometime shortly prior to June 1962 when Williams' last book, Pictures From Breughel, was published.


~ Joyce Carol Oates
Online source here.

Comments

[blackmare-9.livejournal.com]

The images in this are so amazing, and they really resonate with me.

Thanks for posting.

[nightdog-barks.livejournal.com]

*smiles*

Isn't that beautiful? I just fell in love with this poem -- its ferocity and bright sharp edge -- the first time I read it.

[lookfar.livejournal.com]

Beautiful. Not sure what the ending *means* What do you think?

[pwcorgigirl.livejournal.com]

A doctor doesn't expect
to die like the rest of us

I have often thought that myself from the attitude of so many I've run across!

I love the idea of him being reborn in a young, strong body. The immortality of words is very much like that, because his life force is captured forever in them.

[purridot.livejournal.com]

Wow -- the poem almost can't be contained on the screen -- the vicious, vivid images want to burst out.