4.23.2022 – past past the image

past past the image
above the waves, sound of waves
a voice voice speaking

Adapted from the poem, The Sound of Waves by William Carlos Williams in the The Collected Later Poems of William Carlos Williams (1950).

A quatrain? Is that

the end I envision?

Rather the pace

which travel chooses.

Female? Rather the end

of giving and receiving

—of love: love surmounted

is the incentive.

Hardly. The incentive

is nothing surmounted,

the challenge lying

                elsewhere.

No end but among words

looking to the past,

plaintive and unschooled,

wanting a discipline

But wanting

more than discipline

a rock to blow upon

as a mist blows

or rain is driven

against some

headland jutting into

a sea – with small boats

perhaps riding under it

while the men fish

there, words blowing in

taking the shape of stone

    . . . . .

Past that, past the image:

a voice!

out of the mist

above the waves and

the sound of waves, a

voice . speaking!