To Elsie By William Carlos WIlliams

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