Quarrel with a purple hanging because it's no column from clic Pathenon.
Here's splotchy velvet set to hide a door in the wall
and there-there's the man himself praying! Oh quarrel wether
'twas Pope Clenient raped Persephone or-did devil wear a
mitre in that year? Come, there's much use in being thin
on a windy day if the cloth's cut well. And oak leaves will not come
on maples, nor birch trees either-tliat is provided-, but pass
it over, pass it over.
Awoman of good figurs, if she be young and gay, welcomes the wind
that presses tight upon her from forehead to ankles
revealing the impatient mountains and valleys of her secret desire.
The wind brings release to her. But the eind is no blessing
to all women. At the same title it is idle to quarrel over
the relative merits of one thing and another, oak leaves will not come
on maples. But there is a deeper folly yet in such quarreling:
the perfections revealed by a Rembrandt are equal whether it be
question of a laughing Saskia or an old woman cleaning her nails.
--Williams Carlos Williams
***This poem is taken from Williams' Kora in Hell reprinted in
Williams' Imaginations , edited by Webster Schott
(New York: New Directions, 1971)