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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  William Carlos Williams

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Smell!

William Carlos Williams

O STRONG-RIDGED and deeply hollowed

Nose of mine!—what will you not be smelling?

What tactless asses we are, you and I, bony nose,

Always indiscriminate, always unashamed!

And now it is the souring flowers of the bedraggled

Poplars—a festering pulp on the wet earth

Beneath them—with what deep a thirst

We quicken our desires, O nose of mine,

To that rank odor of a passing springtime!

Can you not be decent? Can you not reserve your ardors

For something less unlovely? What girl will care

For us, do you think, if we continue in these ways?

Must you taste everything? Must you know everything?

Must you have a part in everything?