A Tenth Anniversary Photograph, 1952

By Miller Williams b. 1930 Miller Williams

Look at their faces. You know it all.

They married the week he left for the war.

Both are gentle, intelligent people,

as all four of their parents were.

They’ve never talked about much

except the children. They love each other

but never wondered why they married

or had the kids or stayed together.

It wasn’t because they knew the answers.

They had never heard the questions

that twisted through the jokes to come

of Moses and the Ten Suggestions.

They paid their debts and never doubted

God rewarded faith and virtue

or when you got out of line

had big and little ways to hurt you.

People walked alone in parks.

Children slept in their yards at night.

Most every man had a paying job,

and black was black and white was white.

Would you go back? Say that you can,

that all it takes is a wave and a wink

and there you are. So what do you do?

The question is crueler than you think.

Miller Williams, “A Tenth Anniversary Photograph, 1952” from Some Jazz a While: Collected Poems. Copyright © 1999 by Miller Williams. Used with the permission of the poet and the University of Illinois Press.

Source: Some Jazz a While (University of Illinois Press, 1999)

Biography

Poet, editor, critic, and translator Miller Williams was born in Hoxie, Arkansas in 1930, the son of a Methodist clergyman and civil rights activist. Though he entered college as double major in English and foreign languages, an aptitude test revealed “absolutely no aptitude in the handling of words,” Miller has said in interviews. He changed his major to hard sciences to avoid “embarrassing my parents.” Williams received a BS . . .

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