Here is A:
He’s dead
the dog won’t have to
sleep on his potatoes
any more to keep them
from freezing
Here is B:
He’s dead
the dog won’t have to
sleep on his potatoes
any more to keep them
from freezing
he’s dead
the old bastard
He’s a bastard because
there’s nothing
legitimate in him any
more
he’s dead
He’s sick dead
He’s come out of the man
and he’s let
the man go—
the liar
Dead
his eyes
rolled up out of
the light—a mockery
which
love cannot touch—
And here is C, the version Williams actually settled on.
He's dead
the dog won't have to
sleep on his potatoes
any more to keep them
from freezing
he's dead
the old bastard—
He's a bastard because
there's nothing
legitimate in him any
more
he's dead
He's sick dead
he's
a godforsaken curio
without
any breath in it
He's nothing at all
he's dead
shrunken up to the skin
Put his head on
one chair and his
feet on another and
he'll lie there
like an acrobat—
Love's beaten. He
beat it. That's why
he's insufferable—
because
he's here needing a
shave and making love
an inside howl
of anguish and defeat—
He's come out of the man
and he's let
the man go—
the liar
Dead
his eyes
rolled up out of
the light—a mockery
which
love cannot touch—
just bury it
and hide its face
for shame.
Has Williams added important or essential elements? Or is he obscuring or cluttering or digressing and detracting from a powerful primitive starkness, which I hear in the trimmed versions? Do the additions in Version C earn their keep and deserve to be there?
I like the poem as a whole, but I feel it never regains the force and momentum of the brutal first stanza. So I'm partial to Version B right now, but I'm just getting to know the poem, and I might be missing something obviously important, essential, in Williams' additional words.
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