William Carlos Williams

Here you will find the Poem The Crowd At The Ball Game of poet William Carlos Williams

The Crowd At The Ball Game

The crowd at the ball game 
is moved uniformly 

by a spirit of uselessness 
which delights them? 

all the exciting detail 
of the chase 

and the escape, the error 
the flash of genius? 

all to no end save beauty 
the eternal? 

So in detail they, the crowd, 
are beautiful 

for this 
to be warned against 

saluted and defied? 
It is alive, venomous 

it smiles grimly 
its words cut? 

The flashy female with her 
mother, gets it? 

The Jew gets it straight? it 
is deadly, terrifying? 

It is the Inquisition, the 
Revolution 

It is beauty itself 
that lives 

day by day in them 
idly? 

This is 
the power of their faces 

It is summer, it is the solstice 
the crowd is 

cheering, the crowd is laughing 
in detail 

permanently, seriously 
without thought