Paterson: Book Four, Chapter III, p. 187

A song is now available for this poem on the Internet Archive!

The Incomplete Seduction of a Scholar and Clerk; or, "Here's My Key, Go Up and Help Yourself."

I.
Thank Jesus you're sleeping
at last in the dark.
I know it from the sigh that
escapes-
in each odd breath,

While too quickly I move
from the still-made covers,
and do not dress as I
switch on
the lamp near the wall.

In -light- the room's read:
books in each corner,
on each table and each
chair, all
bound thick in cold leather.

II.
And in light, you will open
as blank pages do open,
and the white of your back
will part and then fold -
along the ridge of your spine
still shadowed in night:
two thin pages facing
two thin pages facing

---

III.
My finger is tracing
the lines of your shoulder,
reading your skin
as it
might letters in Braille;

Moving above the
slight rise of your lungs
across ribs even-spaced,
stan-
zas unspoken, I--

Break the rough still-
ness of night in the room
with my own sound of
air mov-
ing thin from my lips-

And I will not tell you
Not ever tell you
Not ever tell you
it was not with the [sound of trumpets],

but a whimper.

KMC 9-27-06

Paterson: Book Four, Chapter III, p. 198-199

The River Facing the Sea

October 10, 1950,
Thalassa pleas nostalgically:
"Here I am, where you are to run!
"This, each of my rivers has done!"

But if to her the river goes,
if to her fresh water flows,
what will become, what will be left?
of a river complicit in its own theft?

The sea is not the river's home;
never to be aqua seafoam.
She will snap and chew, tear and spit,
dying the waters, a sunrise lit.

It moans, beckons, Thalassa calls:
"Here you can sleep, Passaic falls!
"Here you will grow, bearing my seeds."
But the river arrives, and bleeds.

Fresh to brackish and this to salt
a man scoops, drinks, and from it balks.
Turning and looking toward the town
he sees the falls in a white gown.

The Passaic runs, moves but stays,
the Passaic running, moving but staying,
the Passaic ran, moved but stayed,
the Passaic runs, moves, and stays.

gbs 9-26-06

Paterson: Book Four, Chapter III, p. 196

The Circus and the Play of Candle Light

the whistle blows,
closing down the mill
of the National Manufactory
as I listen - hard -
for the cracking sound
of my father's boots
on the stones outside our house -

walking heavy down
Ison,
swallowed in the broom-
sweep sound of the Falls

and it's the third night
of the the wide, striped tent
set up on Main
for passing circus clowns,
their
thin horses
waiting outside on Market -

hitched in a circle
to a post,
shoulders huddled
in the darkness.

The tent flap is closed
as we walk by it outside,
passing near the top hat man
four feet tall, standing on
a deep red box,
waving my father
to pay him -

ten cents for
us both,
eight for a man
on his own

and the seams (the seams)
are glowing in the candle light
and shadows
roam, from face to face
and through the cracks in my fingers

and men inside are walking
with legs eight feet high
and taking turns
tossing three yellow torches,
crackling with the sound of their burning -

with the sound of their burning.

KMC 9-25-06

Paterson: Book Four, Chapter III, p. 192 (with reference back to Book One, Part I, p. 10) [Draft 2]

A song is now available for this poem on the Internet Archive!

The Skeleton of Peter the Dwarf

It's hard to be a hydrocephalic.
54 inches, head to toe.
(27 from my chin to scalp alone;
that makes me a marvel.)

Washington came to see me
(the man, not the city; or, maybe, the city is the man).
He looked at me, marveled at me;
I answered with inactivity.

I floated along, day to day,
endlessly rocking,
loving Jesus and preacher's conversation,
swelling with pride at the show I could provide.

It was hard for me to move,
my head being so huge,
but I got by without going out;
keeping to the cerebral.

My head's got its own box now,
it's lost all its water!
And now they say my skull is a marvel!
but they say nothing of the parts of me everyone's had.

What I never told in my time
was that, more than theology or phrenology,
all I ever wanted out of life
was to not shit in my cradle.

A tiny outhouse with plenty of headroom,
straps to hold me up and a stand
from which I could read
my Bible or a dirty magazine.

Oh that would be marvelous.
"A marvel indeed," they would say,
as they tied me in and
sang of my tenacity.

gbs 9-22-06, revised 9-25-06 with kmc

Paterson: Book Four, Chapter III, p. 193-197

The Forgotten Paterson: A Tavern Song

Do you know
the Bourse?
to the west, go west, go west
Or the slow curve
of River
as the town moves back
from the Falls?

It's the haggle of the Hall,
the Bourse, on City, on West
that lends its name at interest,
to all who give it interest.

And interest is in the hollows,
the alleys cutting through;
a man out overhanging
Washington's thick
weatherboard sign:

This is Godwin's Taproom!
House Ten of Ten of Town!
Let the General INN! (bartender)
As Spirits Might Soothe Hys Thurst!

There are negroes in the dark
(do you see them?)
There are gypsies in the dark
(do you see them?)
There is Paterson on these streets
(oh, oldest man!)
There is a serpent not sleeping,
but coiling tightly
in this almond-gas swill
(Oh, Great God!)

From Park, from
Goffle, from
Boudinot, in oh;
From Collet,
Carrick, from Roswell
Colt;
From Dublin, New Dublin,
New
Dublin Spring, oh
Irish wave and wave:

The work-bell is ringing out --

Do you know this part?
Do you know this part?

KMC 9-23-06

Paterson: Book Four, Chapter III, p. 192 (with reference back to Book One, Part I, p. 10)

The Skeleton of Peter the Dwarf

It's hard to be a hydrocephalic.
54 inches, head to toe.
(27 from my chin to scalp alone;
that makes me a marvel.)

Washington came to see me
(the man, not the city; or, maybe, the city is the man).
He looked at me, marveled at me;
inactivity was my answer.

I floated along, day to day,
endlessly rocking,
loving Jesus and preacher's conversation,
swelling with pride at the show I could provide.

It was hard for me to move,
my head being so huge,
but I got by without going out;
keeping to the cerebral.

My head's got its own box now,
it's lost all its water!
So now they say, "That skull is a marvel!"
never about the parts of me everyone's had.

What I never told in my time
was that, more than theology or phrenology,
all I ever wanted out of life
was to not shit in my cradle.

A tiny outhouse with plenty of headroom,
straps to hold me up and a stand
from which I could read
my Bible or a dirty magazine.

Now they've ripped me apart,
half in one box, half elsewhere.
So now, if bowels move in death,
I'll never know this simple joy.

gbs 9-22-06

Paterson: Book Four, Chapter III, p. 186-7

A song is now available for this poem on the Internet Archive!

The Murder of the Dutchman Jonafen Haring

Something's in
with the horses.
I hear it,
rising up
from dawn.

You will look
As you always look.

The sound of you
on cold steps
down and across
and so briefly in snow;
crunch, I listen
I listen
for you.

And then the
beating of hooves
the beating
of hooves
the beat-
ing of
hooves
on stone.
-------
Through the silence
of strangers
and torches
(four tories,
their judas)

past the entry
of my house
to horses
in darkness
away;

through waiting
on footsteps
in the hall,

a cold thought
will penetrate:

there is no virgin
beginning.

KMC 9-22-06

THE LISTING

So, here's the list of titles with which we're starting. I mentioned this at ulmlls, but if you're coming here blind the sources of these titles was Schwitters's presentation on this book of Paterson. He used these titles as notes to talk about part three. We're very much aware of their Sufjan Stevens-ness, thank you. By the way, the Paterson text we're using is the New Directions paperback, first published in 1995, I think. It's got the sepia-tone photo of the Passaic falls on the front, if you're looking for it.

Here they are:

The Language as a Virgin Purpose

The Murder of the Dutchman Jonafen Haring

The Incomplete Seduction of a Scholar and Clerk; or, "Here's My Key, Go Up and Help Yourself."

Virtue and the Death of the Grandmother

The Difficulties of Holding All Together in the Mind

The Haitian President / His Women

The Skeleton of Peter the Dwarf & [Draft 2]

The Memory of the River

Another Letter from A.G.

The Forgotten Paterson: A Tavern Song

Fred Goodell Jr. and the Murder of His Daughter (Culminating in Her Burial on Garrett Mountain)

The Circus and the Play of Candle Light

The Murder of John S. Van Winkle and His Wife by a Robber in the Winter of 1850

“What Have I Done?” A Claim and Question

The River Facing the Sea

The Man Facing Death

Seeds, or Ideas Spilled by the River Into the Sea

The Bitch and the Man from the Sea

The Trial, Conviction, and Execution of the Murderer John Johnson

The End (Oh, Passaic)

Ars Poetica

This blog represents a collaborative effort between its two authors to write, develop and (in its way) publish a collection of songs and poems derived in inspiration from the third chapter of the fourth book of William Carlos Williams' Paterson. The songs will be written by the following method:

- The Chapter will be read and studied in detail.
- The Chapter will be divided into narrative and thematic movements.
- These movements will be titled.
- Poems will be written from these titles; the connection between the resulting poems and the original text may be tangential, at best.
- These poems will be linked with music; at this point, more changes may, of course, occur.
- Songs will, then, be songs.

The larger purpose of the blog will be to share this work with any interested parties, with feedback welcomed. There is no hope of material gain with this project - it is purely for what the kids call "kicks." What do you think we are? Millionaires?