| William Stafford |
| Vacation One scene as I bow to pour her coffee: -- Three Indians in the scouring drouth huddle at a grave scooped in the gravel, lean to the wind as our train goes by. Someone is gone. There is dust on everything in Nevada. I pour the cream. -- West of Your City, 1960 A Walk in the Country To walk anywhere in the world, to live now, to speak, to breathe a harmless breath: what snowflake, even, may try today so calm a life, so mild a death? Out in the country once, walking the hollow night, I felt a burden of silver come: my back had caught moonlight pouring through the trees like money. That walk was late, though. Late, I gently came into town, and a terrible thing had happened: the world, wide, unbearably bright, had leaped on me. I carried mountains. Though there was much I knew, though kind people turned away, I walked there ashamed -- into that still picture to bring my fear and pain. By dawn I felt all right; my hair was covered with dew; the light was bearable; the air came still and cool. And God had come back there to carry the world again. Since then, while over the world the wind appeals events, and people contend like fools, like a stubborn tumbleweed I hold, hold where I live, and look into every face: Oh friends, where can one find a partner for the long dance over the fields? -- Allegiances, 1970 In The Book A hand appears. It writes on the wall. Just a hand moving in the air, and writing on the wall. A voice comes and says the words, "You have been weighed, you have been judged, and have failed." The hand disappears, the voice fades away into silence. And a spirit stirs and fills and room, all space, all things. All this in The Book asks, "What have you done wrong?" But The Spirit says, "Come to me, who need comfort." And the hand, the wall, the voice are gone, but The Spirit is everywhere. The story ends inside the book, but outside, wherever you are -- It goes on. -- Even in Quiet Places, 1996 The Light by the Barn The light by the barn that shines all night pales at dawn when a little breeze comes. A little breeze comes breathing the fields from their sleep and waking the slow windmill. The slow windmill sings the long day about auguish and loss to the chickens at work. The little breeze follows the slow windmill and the chickens at work till the sun goes down -- Then the light by the barn again. -- Passwords, 1991 A Little Gift Fur came near, night inside it, four legs at a time, when the circus walked off the train. From cage to cage we carried night back to the cats and poured it into their eyes, from ours. They lapped steadily, and the sponge of their feet swelled into the ground. Even today I keep that gift: I let any next thing fold quietly into the blackness that leads all the way inward from the hole in my eye. -- Someday, Maybe, 1973 |
| William Stafford (1914-1993) was born in Hutchinson, Kansas. As a young adult he work a variety of jobs in the wilderness. He bcame a conscientious objector and pacifist during WWII, after which he joined the English faculty of Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. He taught there until his retirement, publishing a large body of work and mentoring countless contemporary poets. Among his many honors is the 1963 National Book Award. |
| Please sign the guestbook |
 |
| Billie Dee's Electronic Poetry Anthology |
 |
| Other Stafford Sites |
| Site features poetry, short bio, photos, links to otherWilliam Stafford webpages, and access to the Electronic Poetry Anthology of Los Angeles poet Billie Dee. |
 |
| William Stafford Memorial Page Remembrances by Naomi Shihab Nye, Robert Bly, Kit Stafford, et al. The Sleep of Grass A tribute in poetry to William Stafford by notable poets including Robert Bly, David Ignatow, Linda Pastan, and others. William Stafford's Kansas Three poems about Stafford's home state. Amy Munno's Willamm Stafford Page Poems, a brief biography, links. Literary Traveler: An Encounter with William Stafford David Feela recalls his meeting with the poet. |
 |
 |
| Books |
| The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems The Darkness Around Us is Deep: Selected Poems of William Stafford 67 other titles |
 |
