William Pillin Everything Falling: Poems by William Pillin, Prints by Polia Pillin, Foreward by Robert Bly, Kayak Books: Santa Cruz, CA, 1971
[p. 12] For Stanley Kurnik
[p. 13] Fall, 1965
Slowly the twigs and the branches
started to fall with the leaves
and the moon drifted downward
and birds fell like wedges of darkness.
Towers and public statues
toppling on quicksilver footing
fell. Nails fell out of the plaster
and with them fell charts, posters, mirrors.
There were cascades of ink wells,
figurines, crystals and paper roses.
Flowerpots fell from balconies
and the balconies too plummeted earthward.
And I saw among silks and slippers
my love falling
without will or passion,
shadow falling through shadow.
At that moment quiescence
became an ideal.
I called for the restoration
of stance and mooring.
I cried, Lord! may all this drifting
be a waltz in my brain,
an eye's strange vibration!
but into the darkness like diminishing echoes
fell piano scores, photograph albums,
wine bottles, silver coins, wax apples --
and from the crumbling mortar
fell stone eagles and grinning angels.
-13-
(See 1971)