Danse Russe by William Carlos Williams

If when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,—
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
“I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!”
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,—

Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

I have always found William Carlos Williams a bit hit or miss. He really took to heart Pound's Imagist ideas, which exhorted the poet to "see the thing as it is," which could result in some awfully dull poems. Even here, in "Danse Russe," there's something overly simple about Williams' attempt to both pay close attention to visual detail and avoid the complication of metaphor:

and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,—

But there is a wonderful human element to "Danse Russe," which isn't always present in Williams. Williams' naked mirror dance recalls a similar scene in Lawrence's The Rainbow, where Anna Brangwen dances naked and pregnant. (I think this might be an intentional allusion, seeing as how this poem was published only two years later and Williams wrote an elegy for Lawrence's death in 1930.) Just as Anna revels in her ability to bear child, Williams calls himself the "happy genius of [his] household."

This is the paradox of "Danse Russe," that in his nakedness Williams sees both himself as isolated and as connected to his family. His wife and child are not present, asleep, and he affirms the singularity of the self:

"I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!"

I love the irony of the joy that comes from loneliness. As a medical doctor, Williams would have been highly attuned to the body as a symbol of the self, and how unique each body is. But the best part of the poem are those two last lines:

Who shall say I am not
The happy genius of my household?

'

"Genius," here, does not mean a person of uncommon intelligence, but the Latin "genius," which is a kind of lesser god that inhabits each person and thing. A man's soul is his genius, but each place has a genius too, and each family. His use of this word emphasizes his dual function, his body and spirit both belonging to him and to a greater unit, and his joy in this seeming contradiction.