Brown paper packages tied up with strings

I don't feel quite ready to take the leap into posting my own poems, but I've been working on a few lately. I don't think it was, necessarily, because I was traumatized by my workshopping experience at UVic, but after my last workshop I didn't write a poem for about a year and a half. It's been so long since I've read poetry, and now, because we didn't bring any of our poetry books along and I can't exactly READ KANJI (and therefore can't patronize the local library, slim as the pickings are there) my only access is what's online.

There has been a fair amount of discussion on "lonlieness" around our household lately--(how cool is it to be able to say "our household?" Just wait til we have children. Then I'll be able to say things like "our children" and "our family." Once we propagate, there will be no stopping us! ---insert evil moo ha ha ha laugh here---), and I've had a few lines from this poem running through my head. It's funny though. When I read this poem now, it strikes me that it's not necessarily a tragic poem (which of course was my interpretation when I was in a, perhaps, more indulgent and tragic state a few years ago.)

Please, enjoy.



Danse Russe

If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,—
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,—

Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

--William Carlos Williams