H O U S E

From Repair 

By C. K. Williams
 

The way you’d remove a ruined house, keeping the “shell,” as we call it,
             brick, frame or stone,

And razing the rest: the inside walls-partitions, we say-then stairs,
              pipes, wiring, commodes,

Saving only… no, save nothing this time; take the self-shelf down to its
              emptiness, hollowness, void.

Down to the scabrous plaster, down to the lining bricks with mortar
              squashed through their joints,

Down to the eyeless windows, the forlorn doorless doorways, the sprung
              joists powdery with rot;

Down to the slab of the cellar, the erratically stuccoed foundation, the
              black earth underneath all.

Down under all to the ancient errors, the indolence, envy, pretension, the
               frailties as though in the gene;

down the where consciousness cries, “Make me new,” but pleads as
               pitiably, “Cherish me as I was.”

Down to the swipe of the sledge, the ravaging bite of the pick; rubble,
                wreckage, vanity: the abyss.        

Analysis

In the poem “House”, Williams uses personification to show that the house does not like the cruelty it is receiving from the shameless humans. Williams explains how people tear down building without even thinking and leaving a home empty. C. K. Williams expresses his feeling in this line: “down to the swipe of the sledge, the ravaging of the pick; rubble, / wreckage, vanity: the abyss.” Williams uses personification to make the parts of the house use human characteristics. He explains how the parts of the house are longing to be built again and lived in. This is because the house was torn down and broken. The poem shows the cruelty of humans destroying possessions and leaving them empty. Williams also indirectly criticizes humans for disregarding the basic needs of survival and destroying them.      

B O N E 

From Repair

By C. K. Williams
 

An erratic, complicated shape, like a tool for some obsolete task:
The hipbone and half the gnawed shank of a small, unrecognizable ani-
          -mal on the pavement in front of the entrance to the museum;
grimy, black with the tire-dust, soot, the blackness from our shoes, our ink,
           the grit that sifts out of our air.

Still, something devoured all nut this much, and if you look more
            closely,
You can see tiny creatures still gnawing at the shred of decomposing
            meat, sucking at the all not putrefying bone.

Decades it must be on their scale that they harvest it, dwell and generate
            and age and die on it.

Where will they transport the essence of it when they’re done?
How far beneath the asphalt, sewers, subways, mains and conduits is the
            living earth to which at last they’ll once again descend?

Which intellect will register in its neurons the great fortune of this ex-
            -ceptional adventure? Which poet sing it?
Such sweetness, such savor: luxury, satiety, and no repentance, not regret.

But Maman won’t let you keep it.
“Maman, please…”
“It’s filthy. Drop it. Drop it! Drop it! Drop it!”     

Analysis

In “Bone” Williams explains a scene of a dead and decaying animal and ponders where it goes after dead. In the poem Williams describes the bone of a decayed and rejected animal. He ponders where the bones go into the earth after an animal has died. Williams explains his question in the following line: “How far beneath the asphalt, sewers, subways, mains and conduits is the/ living earth to which at last they’ll once again descend.” These lines explain how C. K. Williams wondered about the depth into the earth the decomposed bodies go. He also indirectly shows how humans disregard the animal by walking by without caring at all. Plus, he shows how little humans know by asking an impossible question of where the bones go underground. Williams makes us think by questioning the impossible question of where the bones really go. And by showing weaknesses in humans.         

T H E  D A N C E

From Repair

By C. K. Williams
 

A middle-aged women, quit plain, to be plain about it, and somewhat
              stout, to be more courteous still,

but when she and the rather good-looking, much younger man she with,
               get up to dance,

her forearm descends with such delicate lightness, such restrained but
                confident ardor athwart his shoulder,

drawing him to her with such a firm, compelling warmth, and moving
                him with effortless grace

into the union she’s instantly established with the not all rhythmically
                solid music in the second-rate café.

That something in the rest of us, some doubt about ourselves, some sad
                conjecture, seems to be allayed,    

nothing that we’d ever thought of as a real lack, nothing not to be ad-
                 mired or be repentant for,

but something to which we’ve never adequately given credence,
which might have consoling implications about how we misbelieve our-
                 selves, and so the world,

that world beyond us which so often disappoints, but which sometimes
                 shows us, lovely, what we are.    

Analysis        

In the poem “The Dance”, when Williams shows the young man going up to dance with the old woman he also explains that normal people should not doubt themselves. Williams shows and old woman on a dance floor and a young man coming up to dance with her. The young man makes the woman look younger and feel more relaxed. Also, Williams explains how that makes the normal people put aside their fears of other people and embarrassment. C. K. Williams shows his emotions in this line “that something in the rest of us, some doubt about ourselves, some sad/ conjecture, seems to be allayed.” In that line Williams shows how we should not doubt our selves or be ashamed of not only who we dance with, but other people. Williams shows how the young man had enough courage to dance with the old lady and that all people should be like that.

D I R T

From Repair 

By C. K. Williams

My grandmother is washing my mouth
out with soap; half a long century gone
and still she comes at me
with that thick, cruel yellow bar.
All because of a word I said,
not even said really, only repeated,
but Open, she says, open up!
her hand clawing at me head.

I know how her life was hard;
she lost three daughters as babies,
then her husband died, too,
leaving young sons, and no money.
She’d stand me in the sink to pee
because there was never room in the toilet.
But, oh, her soap! Might its bitter burning
Have been what made me a poet?

The street she lived on was unpaved,
her flat two cramped rooms and a fetid
kitchen where she stalked and caught me.
Dare I admit that after she did it
I never really loved her again?
She lived to a hundred, even then.
All along it was the sadness, the squalor,
but I never, until now, loved her again.

 

L O S T  W A X

From Repair

By C. K. Williams
 

My love gives me some wax,
so for once instead of words,
I work at something real:                                           
I knead until I see emerge
a person, a protagonist;
but I must overwork my wax,
it loses its resiliency,
comes apart in crumbs.

I take another block:
this work, I think, will be self;
I can feel it forming, brow
and brain; perhaps it will be me,
perhaps, if I create myself,
I’ll be able to amend myself;
my wax, though, freezes
this time, fissures, splits.

Words or wax, no end
to our self-shaping, our forlorn
awareness at the end of which
Is only more awareness.
Was ever truth so malleable?
Arid, inadhesive bits of matter.
What might heal you? Love.
What make you whole? Love. My Love.