Misadventures of the Monster Librarian

"Pastoral" The little sparrows  hop ingenuously  about the pavement  quarreling  with sharp voices  over those things  that interest them.  But we who are wiser  shut ourselves in  on either hand  and no one knows  whether we think good  or evil.  Meanwhile,  the old man who goes about  gathering dog-lime  walks in the gutter  without looking up  and his tread  is more majestic than  that of the Episcopal minister  approaching the pulpit  of a Sunday.  These things  astonish me beyond words. --William Carlos Williams 

"A Goodnight" Go to sleep--though of course you will not-- to tideless waves thundering slantwise against strong embankments, rattle and swish of spray dashed thirty feet high, caught by the lake wind, scattered and strewn broadcast in over the steady car rails! Sleep, sleep! Gulls' cries in a wind-gust broken by the wind; calculating wings set above the field of waves breaking. Go to sleep to the lunge between foam-crests, refuse churned in the recoil. Food! Food! Offal! Offal! that holds them in the air, wave-white for the one purpose, feather upon feather, the wild chill in their eyes, the hoarseness in their voices-- sleep, sleep . . . Gentlefooted crowds are treading out your lullaby. Their arms nudge, they brush shoulders, hitch this way then that, mass and surge at the crossings-- lullaby, lullaby! The wild-fowl police whistles, the enraged roar of the traffic, machine shrieks: it is all to put you to sleep, to soften your limbs in relaxed postures, and that your...

After yesterdays grumpiness I must redeem myself with something beautiful...   "Approach of Winter" The half-stripped trees struck by a wind together, bending all, the leaves flutter drily and refuse to let go or driven like hail stream bitterly out to one side and fall where the salvias, hard carmine-- like no leaf that ever was-- edge the bare garden. -- William Carlos Williams