Selected Poems Quotes

“The Last Words of My English Grandmother

There were some dirty plates
and a glass of milk
beside her on a small table
near the rank, disheveled bed--

Wrinkled and nearly blind
she lay and snored
rousing with anger in her tones
to cry for food,

Gimme something to eat--
They're starving me--
I'm all right--I won't go
to the hospital. No, no, no

Give me something to eat!
Let me take you
to the hospital, I said
and after you are well

you can do as you please.
She smiled, Yes
you do what you please first
then I can do what I please--

Oh, oh, oh! she cried
as the ambulance men lifted
her to the stretcher--
Is this what you call

making me comfortable?
By now her mind was clear--
Oh you think you're smart
you young people,

she said, but I'll tell you
you don't know anything.
Then we started.
On the way

we passed a long row
of elms. She looked at them
awhile out of
the ambulance window and said,

What are all those
fuzzy looking things out there?
Trees? Well, I'm tired
of them and rolled her head away.”
― William Carlos Williams, Selected Poems

“When I was young and miserable and pretty
And poor, I'd wish
What all girls wish: to have a husband,
A house and children. Now that I'm old, my wish
Is womanish:
That the boy putting groceries in my car

See me. ”
― Randall Jarrell, Selected Poems

“they are mystified by certain instances.”
― William Carlos Williams, Selected Poems

“

At our age the imagination

                 across the sorry facts

                                  lifts us

to make roses

             stand before thorns.

                              Sure

love is cruel

                  and selfish

                                  and totally obtuse—

at least, blinded by the light,

                 young love is.

                                      But we are older,

I to love

               and you to be loved,
                           we have,

no matter how,

                        by our wills survived
                                          to keep
the jeweled prize
                always
                              at our finger tips.
We will it so
                   and so it is
                                      past all accident.

 from “Journey to Love

”
― William Carlos Williams, Selected Poems

“Observe
the jasmine lightness
of the moon.”
― William Carlos Williams, Selected Poems

“The greatness of a poet is not to be measured by the scale but by the intensity and the perfection of his works. Also by his vivacity. Williams is the author of the most vivid poems of modern American poetry.”
― William Carlos Williams, Selected Poems

“I have found that Lost World in the Lost and Found
Columns whose gray illegible advertisements
My soul has memorized world after world:
LOST - NOTHING. STRAYED FROM NOWHERE. NO REWARD.”
― Randall Jarrell, Selected Poems

“Sun benches at the curb bespeak
another season, truncated poplars
that having served for shade
served also later for the fire.”
― William Carlos Williams, Selected Poems

“Complaint"

They call me and I go.
It is a frozen road
past midnight, a dust
of snow caught
in the rigid wheeltracks.
The door opens.
I smile, enter and
shake off the cold.
Here is a great woman
on her side in the bed.
She is sick,
perhaps vomiting,
perhaps laboring
to give birth to
a tenth child. Joy! Joy!
Night is a room
darkened for lovers,
through the jalousies the sun
has sent one golden needle!
I pick the hair from her eyes
and watch her misery
with compassion.”
― William Carlos Williams, Selected Poems