Quotes from C.K. Williams

I believe how you looked was supposed to mean, something graver, more substantial: I'd gaze at my poor face and think, "It's still not there." Apparently I still do. What isn't there? Beauty? Not likely. Wisdom? Less. Is how we live or try to live supposed to embellish us? All I see is the residue of my other, failed faces. But maybe what we're after is just a less abrasive regard: not "It's still not there," but something like "Come in, be still.

This is the wisdom of art, the knowledge that beauty perhaps is the one undeniably unique attribute of the human.

Wasn't I rapt? Wasn't I ravished?

Even the leftover carats of tar in the gutter, so black they seemed to suck the light out of the air. By nightfall kids had come across them: every sidewalk on the block was scribbled with obscenities and hearts.

Maybe shy is when you're lonely and you don't think anybody can help you.

all of [her] is brushed with light, so much glare she seems to singe the very tissue of remembrance. — C.K. Williams, from "Combat," Poems 1963-1983 (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1988)

a weeping, unhealable wound

What would release be? Being forgiven? No, never forgiven, never only forgiven.