6

Were the poems simply social criticism, they would not be very interesting. What they do offer, and work to provide, is just such a

'vocabulary' as I have mentioned. Williams has said with persistent desperation:

              The measure itself
has been lost
      and we suffer for it.
             We come to our deaths
in silence . . .

What does this mean? It means that we have lost control of the very terms by which we propose to live—that we can, say, argue 'limited war,' or defensive armament, for peace, which seem the most bloated instances one can quickly think of. It means that we are committed to suffering and desperation for specious reasons—since there is no reason except the duplicity of our reference. We fear commitment and risk of quite another kind. It is the contrary of all this I believe Olson to know:

He left him naked
the man said, and
nakedness
is what one means

that all start up
to the eye and soul
as though it had never
happened before