Jenn's Journal

Forwarded from Sean - a William Carlos Williams poem that doesn't suck
The Descent

The descent beckons
as the ascent beckoned.
Memory is a kind
of accomplishment,
a sort of renewal
even
an initiation, since the spaces it opens are new places
inhabited by hordes
heretofore unrealized,
of new kinds--
since their movements
are toward new objectives
(even though formerly they were abandoned).

No defeat is made up entirely of defeat--since
the world it opens is always a place
formerly
unsuspected. A
world lost,
a world unsuspected,
beckons to new places
and no whiteness (lost) is so white as the memory
of whiteness .

With evening, love wakens
through its shadows
which are alive by reason
of the sun shining--
grow sleepy now and drop away
from desire .

Love without shadows stirs now
beginning to awaken
as night
advances.

The descent
made up of despairs
and without accomplishment
realizes a new awakening:
which is a reversal
of despair.
For what we cannot accomplish, what
is denied to love,
what we have lost in the anticipation--
a descent follows,
endless and indestructible .

--William Carlos Williams

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