Kora in Hell

by William Carlos Williams

III.

1

So far away August green as it yet is. They say the sun still comes up o’mornings and it’s harvest moon now. Always one leaf at the peak twig swirling, swirling and apples rotting in the ditch.

2

My wife’s uncle went to school with Amundsen. After he, Amundsen, returned from the south pole there was a Scandinavian dinner, which bored Amundsen like a boyhood friend. There was a young woman at his table, silent and aloof from the rest. She left early and he restless at some impalpable delay apologized suddenly and went off with two friends, his great, lean bulk twitching agilely. One knew why the poles attracted him. Then my wife’s mother told me the same old thing, how a girl in their village jilted him years back. But the girl at the supper! Ah—that comes later when we are wiser and older.

3

What can it mean to you that a child wears pretty clothes and speaks three languages or that its mother goes to the best shops? It means: July has good need of his blazing sun. But if you pick one berry from the ash tree I’d not know it again for the same no matter how the rain washed. Make my bed of witchhazel twigs, said the old man, since they bloom on the brink of winter.

There is neither beginning nor end to the imagination but it delights in its own seasons reversing the usual order at will. Of the air of the coldest room it will seem to build the hottest passions. Mozart would dance with his wife, whistling his own tune to keep the cold away and Villon ceased to write upon his Petit Testament only when the ink was frozen. But men in the direst poverty of the imagination buy finery and indulge in extravagant moods in order to piece out their lack with other matter.