1965 Pillin 1971

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. 

(See 1965)


 Kelyn Roberts 2017