The pure products of America <br />go crazy-- <br />mountain folk from Kentucky <br /> <br />or the ribbed north end of <br />Jersey <br />with its isolate lakes and <br /> <br />valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves <br />old names <br />and promiscuity between <br /> <br />devil-may-care men who have taken <br />to railroading <br />out of sheer lust of adventure-- <br /> <br />and young slatterns, bathed <br />in filth <br />from Monday to Saturday <br /> <br />to be tricked out that night <br />with gauds <br />from imaginations which have no <br /> <br />peasant traditions to give them <br />character <br />but flutter and flaunt <br /> <br />sheer rags-succumbing without <br />emotion <br />save numbed terror <br /> <br />under some hedge of choke-cherry <br />or viburnum- <br />which they cannot express-- <br /> <br />Unless it be that marriage <br />perhaps <br />with a dash of Indian blood <br /> <br />will throw up a girl so desolate <br />so hemmed round <br />with disease or murder <br /> <br />that she'll be rescued by an <br />agent-- <br />reared by the state and <br /> <br />sent out at fifteen to work in <br />some hard-pressed <br />house in the suburbs-- <br /> <br />some doctor's family, some Elsie-- <br />voluptuous water <br />expressing with broken <br /> <br />brain the truth about us-- <br />her great <br />ungainly hips and flopping breasts <br /> <br />addressed to cheap <br />jewelry <br />and rich young men with fine eyes <br /> <br />as if the earth under our feet <br />were <br />an excrement of some sky <br /> <br />and we degraded prisoners <br />destined <br />to hunger until we eat filth <br /> <br />while the imagination strains <br />after deer <br />going by fields of goldenrod in <br /> <br />the stifling heat of September <br />Somehow <br />it seems to destroy us <br /> <br />It is only in isolate flecks that <br />something <br />is given off <br /> <br />No one <br />to witness <br />and adjust, no one to drive the car<br /><br />William Carlos Williams<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-elsie/
