Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams
by Kenneth Koch



1

I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.

I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do

and its wooden beams were so inviting.



2

We laughed at the hollyhocks together

and then I sprayed them with lye.

Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.



3

I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the

next ten years.

The man who asked for it was shabby

and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.



4

Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.

Forgive me. I was clumsy and

I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!



-- Kenneth Koch

I think that I have tried to fly thousands of times , but I do not know if I have tried to fall down. It is so wonderful from above …you can see many things , yet you have to fly within to see the most beautiful thing. I sometimes wonder if birds envy us because we cannot fly….probably not. However , if you think of the possibility of being shot for fun…you will reconsider . In all cases birds would not stop flying , because flying is worth taking risk.
Yesterday I watched a film called "Gideon". It was about a mentally-retarded Youngman who moved to a seniors mansion. They loved him and no one took him for a dumb person. One of the seniors was a professor of philosophy and he asked the Youngman about his philosophy in life. Gideon answered" The world we create is the world we live in". Though he did not know what that means , he was a real representation of it. That mentally-retarded person who could not read or write taught the well-read persons and the professor of philosophy how to fly. I was stunned by a little conversation between Gideon and the professor in which they exchanged some verses from Robert Frost 's "The Road Not Taken".Gideon could not read , but he had heard those verses before , and because his soul was a pure one he could not forget them. Read the poem and think of flying .

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost