Here, where I plant my corn as usual
each spring
and gather it into shock each fall
and where all you think
or might think of me and all
the town thinks
is as clear to me
as my pigeons flying, were to me then--
From this ploughed field where I stand
I see that they have
cut down my dogwoods and my oaks
and that they are beginning
to put up your new high school.
You are wondering, perhaps, some of you,
what I am thinking now -- since I am dead
and had refused to cut up my farm
for this project: --to be called
the Peter Kipp High School
that I might be known as
a public benefactor forever!
And my answer is that I loved my woods
and fields more than I loved you
and that I feel the same today.
You have taken that which I loved
and destroyed it. It is yours.
you are the new generation. I have had
my time. But if any imagines that death
has softened my heart, he is a fool.
As far as my name is concerned--
let it go. It's dead. Worn out -- worn out
loving trees and grass that no longer
exist. Do I want my name on
the front of your high school like
a head on a pole?
You have what you need. It is good.
But remeber: You took it. I
never gave it. And remember this also:
I loved what I had and kept it close to me.
For this reason alone
You had today a place on which to build.
Fool though you thought me
when you'd burn down my hay-ricks
and trample my rye, you boys--
and girls too, I tell you, that though
I was ugly and maimed by
that which I had been able to endure,
that in life I worked and loved
and held to that which I loved
till death undid my fingers.
Learn that.
-- William Carlos Williams, 1921