Saturday, November 23, 2024

Design for November / William Carlos Williams


Design for November

Let confusion be the design
and all my thoughts go,
swallowed by desire: recess
from promises in
the November of your arms.
Release from the rose: broken
reeds, strawpale,
through which, from easy
branches that mock the blood
a few leaves fall. There
the mind is cradled,
stripped also and returned
to the ground, a trivial
and momentary clatter. Sleep
and be brought down and so
condone the world, eased of
the jagged sky and all
its petty imageries, flying
birds, its fogs and windy
phalanxes . . .

~~
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
from Collected Later Poems, 1944

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]


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