Paterson (Revised Edition) (18 page)

Read Paterson (Revised Edition) Online

Authors: William Carlos Williams

Uranium, the complex atom, breaking

down, a city in itself, that complex

atom, always breaking down     .

to lead.

But giving off that, to an

exposed plate, will reveal     .

And so, with coarsened hands

she stirs

And love, bitterly contesting, waits

that the mind shall declare itself not

alone in dreams     .

A man like you should have everything he wants     .

not half asleep

waiting for the sun to part the labia

of shabby clouds     .     but a man (or

a woman) achieved

flagrant!

adept at thought, playing the words

following a table which is the synthesis

of thought, a symbol that is to him,

sun up! a Mendelief, the elements laid

out by molecular weight, identity

predicted before found! and     .

Oh most powerful connective, a bead

to lie between continents through

which a string passes     .

Ah Madam!

this is order, perfect and controlled

on which empires, alas, are built

But there may issue, a contaminant,

some other metal radioactive

a dissonance, unless the table lie,

may cure the cancer     .     must

lie in that ash     .      Helium plus, plus

what? Never mind, but plus     .     a

woman, a small Polish baby-nurse

unable     .

Woman is the weaker vessel, but

the mind is neutral, a bead linking

continents, brow and toe

and will at best take out

its spate in mathematics

replacing murder

Sappho vs Elektra!

The young conductor gets his orchestra

and leaves his patroness

with child.

.     les idées Wilsoniennes nous

gâtent
     .     the vague irrelevances

and the destructive silences

inertia

As Carrie Nation

to Artemis

so is our life today     .

They took her out West on a photographing

expedition

to study chiaroscuro

to Denver, I think.

Somewhere around there     .

the marriage

was annulled. When she returned

with the baby

openly

taking it to her girls’ parties, they

were shocked

—and the Abbess Hildegard, at her own

funeral, Rupertsberg, 1179

had enjoined them to sing the choral, all

women, she had written for the occasion

and it was done, the peasants kneeling

in the background     .     as you may see

Advertisement

The Constitution says:
To borrow money on the credit of the United States.
It does not say: To borrow money from Private bankers.

To explain the fallacies and illusions upon which our present method of financing the national budget is based would take too much space and time. To win the cold war we must reform our finance system. The Russians understand only force. We must be stronger than they and build more airplanes.

FINANCE THE BUILDING OF AIRPLANES AS FOLLOWS:

  1. Pay the manufacturer with a NATIONAL CREDIT CERTIFICATE.
  2. Manufacturer deposits the Certificate with his bank the same as a check.
  3. Banker returns National Credit Certificate to Treasury Dept., which opens UNITED STATES NATIONAL CREDIT for banker.
  4. Banker in turn now opens BANKER’S CREDIT for depositor. Manufacturer draws checks against his credit as usual.
  5. Manufacturer pays his workers with checks upon his bank.
  6. Treasury Dept. pays banker a service charge of 1% for handling the Treasury transaction. If the airplanes cost 1 million dollars the banker’s profit would be $10,000.

WHAT DO WE ACCOMPLISH BY USING THIS SYSTEM?

  1. Manufacturer is paid in full.
  2. Workers are paid in full.
  3. Bankers make a $10,000. profit every time he handles a 1 million dollar National Credit Certificate.
  4. We do not add to the National Debt.
  5. We do not have to increase federal taxation.
  6. The only cost of the 1 million dollar airplane is only $10,000, the cost of the banker’s service charges.
  7. We can build 100 airplanes for the price of one.

I would like to have some smart economist or banker stick out his neck and contradict one single claim I present herewith to the nation.

ENFORCE THE CONSTITUTION ON MONEY

August Walters, Newark, N. J.

MONEY     :     JOKE (i.e., crime

under the circumstances : value

chipped away at accelerated pace.)

— do you joke when a man is dying

of a brain tumor?

Take up the individual misfortune

by buffering it into the locality — not

penalize him with surgeon’s fees

and accessories at an advance over the

market price for

“hospital income”

Who gets that? The poor?

What poor?

— at $8.50 a day, ward rate?

short of the possibility of recovery

And not enrich the widow either

long past fertility

Money: Uranium (bound to be lead)

throws out the firez     .

— the radium’s the credit — the wind in

the trees, the hurricane in the

palm trees, the tornado that lifts

oceans     .

Trade winds that broached a continent

drive the ship forward     .

Money sequestered enriches avarice, makes

poverty:     the direct cause of

disaster     .

while the leak drips

Let out the fire, let the wind go!

Release the Gamma rays that cure the cancer

.     the cancer, usury. Let credit

out     .      out from between the bars

before the bank windows

.     credit, stalled

in money, conceals the generative

that thwarts art or buys it (without

understanding), out of poverty of

wit, to win, vicariously, the blue ribbon

to win

the Congressional Medal

for bravery beyond the call of duty but

not to end as a bridge-tender

on government dole     .

Defeat may steel us

in knowledge : money : joke

to be wiped out sooner or later at stroke

of pen     .

.     just because they ain’t no water fit to drink in that spot (or you ain’t found none) don’t mean there ain’t no fresh water to be had NOWHERE     .     .

—and to Tolson

and to his ode and to Liberia and to Allen Tate

(Give him credit)

and to the South generally

Selah!

— and to 100 years of it — splits

off the radium, the Gamma rays

will eat their bastard bones out who

are opposed

Selah!

Pobres bastardos, misquierdos

Pobrecitos

Ay! que pobres

— yuh wanna be killed with your

face in the dirt and a son-of-a-bitch

of a
Guardia Civil
giving you the

coup de (dis) grace

right in the puss     .     ?

Selah! Selah!

Credit!   I hope you have a long credit

and a dirty one

Selah!

What is credit?
the Parthenon

What is money?
the gold entrusted to Phideas for the

statue of Pallas Athena, that he “put aside” for private purposes

— the gold, in short, that Phideas stole

You can’t steal credit   :   the Parthenon.

— let’s skip any reference, at this time, to the Elgin marbles.

Reuther — shot through a window, at whose pay?

— then there’s Ben Shahn     .

Here follows a list of the mayors of

120 American cities in the years following

the Civil War.     .     or the War Between

the States, if you prefer     .     like

cubes of fat in the
blutwurst
of the

times     .

Credit.     Credit.     Credit.     Give them all credit. They were the fathers of many a later novelist, no worse than the rest.

Money : Joke

could be wiped out

at stroke

of pen

and was when

gold and pound were

devalued

Money : small time

reciprocal action relic

precedent to stream-lined

turbine : credit

Uranium : basic thought—leadward

Fractured : radium : credit

Curie : woman (of no importance) genius : radium

THE GIST

credit : the gist

IN

venshun.

O.KAY

In venshun

and seeinz az how yu hv/started. Will you consider

a remedy of a lot :

i.e. LOCAL control of local purchasing

power     .

?     ?

Difference between squalor of spreading slums

and splendour of renaissance cities.

Credit makes solid

is related directly to the effort,

work: value created and received,

“the radiant gist” against all that

scants our lives.

 

III.

Haven’t you forgot your virgin purpose,

the language?

What language? “The past is for those who

lived in the past,” is all she told me.

Shh! the old man’s asleep

—all but for the tides, there is no river,

silent now, twists and turns

in his dreams     .

The ocean yawns!

It is almost the hour

—and did you ever know of a sixty year

woman with child     .     ?

Listen!

someone’s coming up the path,     .     perhaps

it is not too late? Too late     .

J
ONATAN,
bap. Oct. 29, 1752; m. Gritie (Haring?). He was born and brought up at Hoppertown (Hohokus), but in 1779 was running the grist and saw-mill at Wagaraw, now owned by the Alyeas. On the night of April 21, 1779, his wife was aroused by a noise as of someone trying to get into the lower part of the mill, where, for better security, he kept his horses. “Yawntan,” said she in Dutch, “someone is stealing your horses.” Lighting a lantern, he threw open the upper half-door and challenged the marauders. Instantly a shot was fired through the lower half-door, wounding him in the abdomen. He staggered back into the house and fell upon a bed, covering himself up in the blankets. A party of Tories, masked and disguised, rushed in, and, compelling his young wife to hold a candle, they savagely attacked the prostrate form. Once he seized one of the bayonettes and holding it for a moment, cried at his assailant: “Andries, this is an old grudge.” With redoubled fury the inhuman savages bayonetted
him
, until with a groan he expired. His two infant children who were wont to sleep in a trundle bed beneath his, were horrified spectators of their father’s massacre. After the murderers were gone, his wife and a neighbor took the blood out of the bed in double handfuls. The murdered man had received nineteen or twenty cruel bayonette thrusts. It was believed that some neighbor had led the Tories to the attack, less from political or pecuniary considerations than from motives of private revenge. Hopper was a captain in the Bergen County militia. One of his children was Albert, bap. Oct. 6, 1776. It is said that Jonathan’s children removed to Cincinnati, and there attained some prominence.

Come on, get going. The tide’s in

Leise, leise! Lentement! Che va piano
,

va lontano!
Virtue,

my kitten, is a complex reward in all

languages, achieved slowly.

.     which reminds me

of an old friend, now gone     .

—while he was still

in the hotel business, a tall and rather beautiful young woman came to his desk one day to ask if there were any interesting books to be had on the premises. He, being interested in literature, as she knew, replied that his own apartment was full of them and that, though he couldn’t leave at the moment—Here’s my key, go up and help yourself.

She thanked him and

went off. He forgot all about her.

After lunch he too

went to his rooms not remembering until he was at the door that he had no key. But the door was unlatched and as he entered, a girl was lying naked on the bed. It startled him a little. So much so that all he could do was to remove his own clothes and lie beside her. Quite comfortable, he soon fell into a heavy sleep. She also must have slept.

They wakened later,

simultaneously, much refreshed.

—another, once gave me

an old ash-tray, a bit of

porcelain inscribed

with the legend,
La Vertue

est toute dans l’effort

baked into the material,

maroon on white, a glazed

Venerian scallop     .     for

ashes, fit repository

for legend, a quieting thought:

Virtue is wholly

in the effort to be virtuous     .

This takes connivance,

takes convoluted forms, takes

time!     A sea-shell     .

Let’s not dwell on childhood’s

lecherous cousins. Why

should we? Or even on

as comparatively simple

a thing as the composite

dandelion that

changes its face overnight     .     Virtue,

a mask:     the mask,

virtuous     .

Kill the explicit sentence, don’t you think? and expand our meaning—by verbal sequences. Sentences, but not grammatical sentences: dead-falls set by schoolmen. Do you think there is any virtue in that? better than sleep? to revive us?

She used to call me her

country bumpkin

Now she is gone I think

of her as in Heaven

She made me believe in

it     .     a little

Where else could she go?

There was

Something grandiose

about her     .

Man and woman are not

much emphasized as

such at that age: both

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