William B. Watterson
William B. Watterson Poems
(Galileo Galilei, from Arcetri,1638)
My telescope astounded and amazed.
The moons of Jupiter I viewed and knew
...
Lightly skipping
up the steps
of a rustic beach cottage,
she could still hear
...
It rained the day she died.
Somber, stygian clouds crept across Beech Mountain
In the night, suffusing the swales between somnolent hills,
Drenching the ancient peaks, and we awoke to sodden skies.
...
“My son, you’re only twelve years old, ” she said,
“And if I let you journey into town,
Someone might cut your throat or strike you down.”
But still the boy continually pled,
...
Being married is a lot like
Eating handfuls of jelly beans
One after another.
In about every dozen sugary lumps
...
Do not let throbbing love subside tonight,
Strong passions crave release before the day,
Make haste against the breaking of the light.
...
We sat in a weathered shack
Secure in our adolescent dreams,
Playing at cards and life.
Paper-winged cicadas sang
...
A gnarled, leathery hand
tousles salt-and-pepper hair,
then scrapes a three-day stubble.
Uncle O'dell wipes
...
Hunkering animatedly,
a sleek, black '47 Olds
patiently purrs
atop a newly-paved
...
ten
long years march
vapid across the soiled pages
in the dog-eared books
...
Standing together
on a paint-chipped platform
by a weather-scarred station,
they kissed
...
A consummate Southern gentleman, he had
A pleasant easy drawl, so smooth and slow
It tickled your ears and made you smile to hear
Him say, "Hello." My next-door neighbor for
...
I
A round glass bowl holds
Ten little golden sunbursts,
Orange straw flowers.
...
William B. Watterson Biography
Retired English professor. A.A. Gardner-Webb University; B.S., M.A. Appalachian State University; Graduate study at Harvard University, Purdue University, Wake Forest University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of New England. Forty-four years teaching in several colleges and secondary schools. Named Outstanding English Teacher of the Year in 2001 by the North Carolina English Teachers Association. Hobbies include reading; writing poetry; travel; working out at the YMCA; watching major league baseball, especially the Atlanta Braves.)
The Best Poem Of William B. Watterson
Cogito Ergo Sum
(Galileo Galilei, from Arcetri,1638)
My telescope astounded and amazed.
The moons of Jupiter I viewed and knew
That farther I had seen than any man
Before. Pope Urban, awed by my perceptive
Prowess in astronomy, praised my
Inquisitive and investigative bent.
My 'Dialogues' the scientific world
Received with openness and lauded all
My wit and logic. And even censors
Gave the needed stamp of sanction.
With men of greatness I conversed and met.
They sought me out and spread my work abroad
Like fertile seeds that ride upon the wind,
To lodge, and sprout, and rise to grow again
In a vast diaspora of fecund germination.
To stop the truth? One may as well assay
To tame the tides, or still a plunging cataract,
Suppress the stars that nightly thrum with the
Deep mysterious music of the spheres.
Why, then, cannot the Church admit the earth
Revolves about the sun, that Aristotle, Ptolemy,
And those whose geocentric claims have missed
The mark stand sorely wrong? Heliocentric
Heresy the Inquisition vowed
I favored, so here I languish in Arcetri,
A man confined to die in my own home.
'And yet it moves, ' they swore they heard me say.
Devout and worthy all my life, I now
Am blind and past three score and ten,
Like Oedipus, an outcast in my native
Land, my loved ones all quite lost to me:
Virginia dead, and Livia sequestered still;
Vincenzio, my only son, musician, protégé,
A stranger to me now; my brother Michelangelo
Perished in the plague, to me long gone.
And what, I ask, can now be left for me,
Bereft, blind, infirm, an exile in my villa,
Sight stolen by whatever whims of fate
Control men's destinies, my body broken
And bowed by age, my freedom purloined
By those who deem God's Truth anathema?
But instinct yet compels me to declare
The mind is its own place, and in my soul
I soar above this crushed and shattered frame
To heights as yet unknown to mortal men,
Where even eagles do not dare to fly.
William B. Watterson Comments
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