The Hill Country
A POEM
Take for instance Mary; she
shocked by some divine insistence.
Yet the experience of God,
the mere feel of him was itself not enough.
To tell it
to tell it
to shape the noun & verb of it
the imperative.
This God then
not a solipsism, not
the falling of one tree
in the silence of a forest.
Thus you ask:
why write?
Ask rather: Mary
why did you make such haste
through the hill country
— always through the hill country —
and why to Elizabeth
barren as a winter field?
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My very breath seems evidence of You.
My pulse throbs with a Spirit not…
However pure this love, however holy,
I want to hold your poor flesh in my…
Williams knew how bored, self-centered, and self-indulgent the rich can be, and how desperately confused, vulnerable, and self-lacerating the poor often are.