Page:Spring and all - William Carlos Williams.djvu/47

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— 41 —


I watched.

You sobbed, you beat your pillow
you tore your hair
you dug your nails into your sides

I was your nightgown
I watched!

Clean is he alone
after whom stream
the broken pieces of the city—
flying apart at his approaches

but I merely
caress you curiously
fifteen years ago and you still
go about the city, they say
patching up sick school children

Understood in a practical way, without calling upon mystic agencies, of this or that order, it is that life becomes actual only when it is identified with ourselves. When we name it, life exists. To repeat physical experiences has no—

The only means he has to give value to life is to recognise it with the imagination and name it; this is