If it Weren't for you Meddling Kids!

Children's Games

William Carlos Williams

I

This is a schoolyard

crowded

with children

of all ages near a village

on a small stream

meandering by

where some boys

are swimming

bare-ass

or climbing a tree in leaf

everything

is motion

elder women are looking

after the small

fry

a play wedding a

christening

nearby one leans

hollering

into

an empty hogshead

II

Little girls

whirling their skirts about

until they stand out flat

tops pinwheels

to run in the wind with

or a toy in 3 tiers to spin

with a piece

of twine to make it go

blindman's-buff follow the

leader stilts

high and low tipcat jacks

bowls hanging by the knees

standing on your head

run the gauntlet

a dozen on their backs

feet together kicking

through which a boy must pass

roll the hoop or a

construction

made of bricks

some mason has abandoned

III

The desperate toys

of children

their

imagination equilibrium

and rocks

which are to be

found

everywhere

and games to drag

the other down

blindfold

to make use of

a swinging

weight

with which

 

at random

to bash in the 

heads about

 

them

Brueghel saw it all 

and with his grim

 

humor faithfully 

recorded 

it

I enjoyed this poem, Childrens Games, by William Carlos Williams because it was light hearted but heavy at the same time.  The first two stanzas make it seem like happy innocent child's play, but then the third stanza turns dark and sinister, expressing the possibility of dangerous, hurtful things happening under the guise of innocence.  I also thought this poem was interesting because it reminded me of a couple of Blake's poems that we read earlier in Songs of Innocence and Experience, for example, the Nurse's Song, that is seen in both sections of his book (Innocence and Experience), this seemed like a good comparison to Williams as both he and Blake are exploring the ideas of childhood innocence and the dangers that can be underneath the surface.  In William's poem, the children are the ones with the potential for violence hidden under the guise of play, whereas in the poem by Blake in the Experience section, it seems that it is the adult, the Nurse, who is jealous of the care-free innocence of the children and wants to suppress it.