Williams brought over
A bag of plums,
A tree of white blossoms,
A locomotive,
Ghost- images of
Her thread-bare ankles

I’ve loved his poems !
The pages of his ‘Collected Works’
all dog-eared now,
Tear-stained,
Or smiling

I knew that woman ,
Sitting at the window
A child on her lap
tears on her face

And that old Duchess
With her bag of plums
So sweet, so tasty
In her attic of despair
The hooks of her gown
Undone,
The whisper of silk and linen
Falling to the floor,
Her veined body emerging
From the lonely tangles

How I labored With him
On his dark nights
In Paterson,
Women crying out
For dear life
Their men
Tweedling in the outer rooms

How I have cherished
his white chickens
beside a red wheel-barrow
wet with rain-water
And his words flung in
the wheel tracks
Of my mind
On the way home.