Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Crowds - real and potential

Click image to enlarge

The crowd at the ball game - William Carlos Williams 

The crowd at the ball game
is moved uniformly

by a spirit of uselessness
which delights them—

all the exciting detail
of the chase

and the escape, the error
the flash of genius—

all to no end save beauty
the eternal—

So in detail they, the crowd,
are beautiful

for this
to be warned against

saluted and defied—
It is alive, venomous

it smiles grimly
its words cut—

The flashy female with her
mother, gets it—

The Jew gets it straight— it
is deadly, terrifying—

It is the Inquisition, the
Revolution

It is beauty itself
that lives

day by day in them
idly—

This is
the power of their faces

It is summer, it is the solstice
the crowd is

cheering, the crowd is laughing
in detail

permanently, seriously
without thought


2 comments:

talnik said...

He looks suspiciously like Geppetto.

ambisinistral said...

Hmmmm… I wonder who his wooden puppet is. I can think of several candidates on the public stage, but their noses don't grow and shrink so I guess it's not them.