Poetry

Instructions

2022-09-25

Take these for the pain
twice daily after eating
Take these for a headache
and these for your tired legs
Take these for a pain in the neck
in the mornings

Take these if you miss your train
And you can’t see the funny side
Take these if you suffer

Take these for loss
or a twinge in the heart
Take them in the evening
Stand by a window you can’t see out of
Take with water and look into the dark
For as long as you can bear

William Carlos Williams on love and cruelty

2019-07-24

I’ve been reading The Art of Cruelty by Maggie Nelson and there’s tons of great extracts and references. One that caught me in particular was this excerpt from The Ivy Crown by William Carlos Williams, which (I think) disputes the rosy typical notions about love but reaffirms it as a wilder, more brutal thing:

It’s a nice disputation of the oft-quoted 1 Corinthians 13:4-7: