Famous Williams Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Williams poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous williams poems. These examples illustrate what a famous williams poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Hugo Williams
How beautiful it would be to wait for you again
in the usual place,
not looking at the door,
keeping a lookout in the long mirror,
knowing that if you are late
it will not be too late,
knowing that all I have to do
is wait a little longer
and you will be pushing through the other customers,
out of breath, apologetic.
Where have you...Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
Each time it rings
I think it is for
me but it is
not for me nor for
anyone it merely
rings and we
serve it bitterly
together, they and I...Read more of this...
by
John Williams
The blatant horns blare strident sound;
Delighted, you laugh and seize
My passive arm, but I have found
Content in the harmonies.
They sound, are silent; please or annoy,
Are not clever, cruel, or coy
Like human qualities.
See agile fingers in frantic flight
Along the smoking row
Of piano keys cut from ebony night
And from the sullied snow
Of the city. Look love, listen love, tell me--
Where does...Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
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...Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
If when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,—
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely,
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against...Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
The whole process is a lie,
unless,
crowned by excess,
It break forcefully,
one way or another,
from its confinement—
or find a deeper well.
Antony and Cleopatra
were right;
they have shown
the way. I love you
or I do not live
at all.
Daffodil time
is past. This is
summer, summer!
the heart says,
and not even the full of it.
No doubts
are...Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
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...Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
This, with a face
like a mashed blood orange
that suddenly
would get eyes
and look up and scream
War! War!
clutching her
thick, ragged coat
a piece of hat
broken shoes
War! War!
stumbling for dread
at the young men
who with their gun-butts
shove her
sprawling—
a note
at the foot of the page....Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
Cut the bank for the fill.
Dump sand
pumped out of the river
into the old swale
killing whatever was
there before—including
even the muskrats. Who did it?
There's the guy.
Him in the blue shirt and
turquoise skullcap.
Level it down
for him to build a house
on to build a
house on to build a house on
to build a house
on to build a house on to . . ....Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
Some leaves hang late, some fall
before the first frost—so goes
the tale of winter branches and old bones....Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
I think I have never been so exalted
As I am now by you,
O frost bitten blossoms,
That are unfolding your wings
From out the envious black branches.
Bloom quickly and make much of the sunshine
The twigs conspire against you
Hear them!
They hold you from behind
You shall not take wing
Except wing by wing, brokenly,
And yet—
Even they
Shall not endure for ever....Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
Gagarin says, in ecstasy, he could have gone on forever he floated at and sang and when he emerged from that one hundred eight minutes off the surface of the earth he was smiling. Then he returned to take his place among the rest of us from all that division and subtraction a measure to and heel heel and toe...Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
Upon the table in their bowl
in violent disarray
of yellow sprays, green spikes
of leaves, red pointed petals
and curled heads of blue
and white among the litter
of the forks and crumbs and plates
the flowers remain composed.
Coolly their colloquy continues
above the coffee and loud talk
grown frail as vaudeville....Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
Old age is
a flight of small
cheeping birds
skimming
bare trees
above a snow glaze.
Gaining and failing
they are buffeted
by a dark wind—
But what?
On harsh weedstalks
the flock has rested—
the snow
is covered with broken
seed husks
and the wind tempered
with a shrill
piping of plenty....Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
Your thighs are appletrees
whose blossoms touch the sky.
Which sky? The sky
where Watteau hung a lady's
slipper. Your knees
are a southern breeze—or
a gust of snow. Agh! what
sort of man was Fragonard?
—As if that answered
anything.—Ah, yes. Below
the knees, since the tune
drops that way, it is
one of those white summer days,
the tall grass of your ankles
flickers upon the shore—
Which shore?—
the sand clings to...Read more of this...
by
John Williams
I've seen you many times in many places--
Theater, bus, train, or on the street;
Smiling in spring rain, in winter sleet,
Eyes of any hue in myriad faces;
Midnight black, all shades of brown your hair,
Long, short, bronze or honey-fair.
Instantly have I loved, have never spoken;
Slowly a truck passed, a light changed,
A door closed--all seemingly pre-arranged--
Then you were gone forever, the spell...Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
The half-stripped trees
struck by a wind together,
bending all,
the leaves flutter drily
and refuse to let go
or driven like hail
stream bitterly out to one side
and fall
where the salvias, hard carmine—
like no leaf that ever was—
edge the bare garden....Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
A rumpled sheet
Of brown paper
About the length
And apparent bulk
Of a man was
Rolling with the
Wind slowly over
And over in
The street as
A car drove down
Upon it and
Crushed it to
The ground. Unlike
A man it rose
Again rolling
With the wind over
And over to be as
It was before....Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
Well, Lizzie Anderson! seventeen men—and
the baby hard to find a father for!
What will the good Father in Heaven say
to the local judge if he do not solve this problem?
A little two-pointed smile and—pouff!—
the law is changed into a mouthful of phrases....Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
A day on the boulevards chosen out of ten years of
student poverty! One best day out of ten good ones.
Berket in high spirits—"Ha, oranges! Let's have one!"
And he made to snatch an orange from the vender's cart.
Now so clever was the deception, so nicely timed
to the full sweep of certain wave summits,
that the rumor of the...Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
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...Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
It was an icy day.
We buried the cat,
then took her box
and set fire to it
in the back yard.
Those fleas that escaped
earth and fire
died by the cold....Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
I will teach you my townspeople
how to perform a funeral
for you have it over a troop
of artists—
unless one should scour the world—
you have the ground sense necessary.
See! the hearse leads.
I begin with a design for a hearse.
For Christ's sake not black—
nor white either — and not polished!
Let it be whethered—like a farm wagon—
with gilt wheels (this could be
applied fresh...Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
Flowers through the window
lavender and yellow
changed by white curtains—
Smell of cleanliness—
Sunshine of late afternoon—
On the glass tray
a glass pitcher, the tumbler
turned down, by which
a key is lying— And the
immaculate white bed...Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
like a buttercup
upon its branching stem-
save that it's green and wooden-
I come, my sweet,
to sing to you.
We lived long together
a life filled,
if you will,
with flowers. So that
I was cheered
when I came first to know
that there were flowers also
in hell.
Today
I'm filled with the fading memory of...Read more of this...
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