Then I raised my head
and stared out over
the blue February waste
to the blue bank of hill
with stars on it
in strings and festoons –
but above that:
one opaque
stone of a cloud
just on the hill
left and right
as far as I could see;
and above that
a red streak, then
icy blue sky!
It was a fearful thing
to come into a man's heart
at that time; that stone
over the little blinking stars
they'd set there.
~~ William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) from A Book of Poems: Al que quiere!, 1917
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]
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]
In the flashes and black shadows
of July
the days, locked in each other’s arms,
seem still
so that squirrels and colored birds
go about at ease over
the branches and through the air.
Where will a shoulder split or
a forehead open and victory be?
Nowhere.
Both sides grow older.
And you may be sure
not one leaf will lift itself
from the ground
and become fast to a twig again.
~~ William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) from Sour Grapes, 1921 [Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]
The dayseye hugging the earth
in August, ha! Spring is
gone down in purple,
weeds stand high in the corn,
the rainbeaten furrow
is clotted with sorrel
and crabgrass, the
branch is black under
the heavy mass of the leaves –
The sun is upon a
slender green stem
ribbed lengthwise.
He lies on his back –
it is a woman also –
he regards his former
majesty and
round the yellow center,
split and creviced and done into
minute flowerheads, he sends out
his twenty rays – a little
and the wind is among them
to grow cool there!
One turns the thing over
in his hand and looks
at it from the rear: brownedged,
green and pointed scales
armor his yellow.
But turn and turn,
the crisp petals remain
brief, translucent, greenfastened,
barely touching at the edges:
blades of limpid seashell.
~~
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), 1921
from Sour Grapes, 1921
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]
The half-stripped trees
struck by a wind together,
bending all,
the leaves flutter drily
and refuse to let go
or driven like hail
stream bitterly out to one side
and fall
where the salvias, hard carmine,—
like no leaf that ever was —
edge the bare garden.
~~ William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) from Complete Collected Poems, 1906-1938, 1938 [Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]
flowing edge to edge
their clear edges meeting —
the winds of this northern March —
blow the bark from the trees
the soil from the field
the hair from the heads of
girls, the shirts from the backs
of the men, roofs from the
houses, the cross from the
church, clouds from the sky
the fur from the faces of
wild animals, crusts
from scabby eyes, scales from
the mind and husbands from wives
~~
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
from Collected Poems, 1921-1931, 1934
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]
Snow:
years of anger following
hours that float idly down —
the blizzard
drifts its weight
deeper and deeper for three days
or sixty years, eh? Then
the sun! a clutter of
yellow and blue flakes —
Hairy looking trees stand out
in long alleys
over a wild solitude.
The man turns and there —
his solitary track stretched out
upon the world.
~~
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), 1920
from Sour Grapes, 1921
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]
I have discovered that most of
the beauties of travel are due to
the strange hours we keep to see them:
the domes of the Church of
the Paulist Fathers in Weehawken
against a smoky dawn — the heart stirred —
are beautiful as Saint Peters
approached after years of anticipation.
II
Though the operation was postponed
I saw the tall probationers
in their tan uniforms
hurrying to breakfast!
III
— and from basement entries
neatly coiffed, middle aged gentlemen
with orderly moustaches and
well-brushed coats
IV
— and the sun, dipping into the avenues
streaking the tops of
the irregular red houselets,
and
the gay shadows drooping and drooping.
V
— and a young horse with a green bed-quilt
on his withers shaking his head:
bared teeth and nozzle high in the air!
VI
— and a semicircle of dirt-colored men
about a fire bursting from an old
ash can,
VII
— and the worn,
blue car rails (like the sky!)
gleaming among the cobbles!
VIII
— and the rickety ferry-boat "Arden"!
What an object to be called "Arden"
among the great piers, — on the
ever new river!
"Put me a Touchstone
at the wheel, white gulls, and we'll
follow the ghost of the Half Moon
to the North West Passage — and through!
(at Albany!) for all that!"
IX
Exquisite brown waves — long
circlets of silver moving over you!
enough with crumbling ice crusts among you!
The sky has come down to you,
lighter than tiny bubbles, face to
face with you!
His spirit is
a white gull with delicate pink feet
and a snowy breast for you to
hold to your lips delicately!
X
The young doctor is dancing with happiness
in the sparkling wind, alone
at the prow of the ferry! He notices
the curdy barnacles and broken ice crusts
left at the slip's base by the low tide
and thinks of summer and green
shell-crusted ledges among
the emerald eel-grass!
XI
Who knows the Palisades as I do
knows the river breaks east from them
above the city — but they continue south
— under the sky — to bear a crest of
little peering houses that brighten
with dawn behind the moody
water-loving giants of Manhattan.
XII
Long yellow rushes bending
above the white snow patches;
purple and gold ribbon
of the distant wood:
what an angle
you make with each other as
you lie there in contemplation.
XIII
Work hard all your young days
and they'll find you too, some morning
staring up under
your chiffonier at its warped
bass-wood bottom and your soul —
out!
— among the little sparrows
behind the shutter.
XIV
— and the flapping flags are at
half-mast for the dead admiral.
XV
All this —
was for you, old woman.
I wanted to write a poem
that you would understand.
For what good is it to me
if you can't understand it?
But you got to try hard —
But —
Well, you know how
the young girls run giggling
on Park Avenue after dark
when they ought to be home in bed?
Well,
that's the way it is with me somehow.
~~ William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) from A Book of Poems: Al que quiere!, 1917
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]
If you had come away with me
into another state
we had been quiet together.
But there the sun coming up
out of the nothing beyond the lake was
too low in the sky,
there was too great a pushing
against him,
too much of sumac buds, pink
in the head
with the clear gum upon them,
too many opening hearts of
lilac leaves,
too many, too many swollen
limp poplar tassels on the
bare branches!
It was too strong in the air.
I had no rest against that
springtime!
The pounding of the hoofs on the
raw sods
stayed with me half through the night.
I awoke smiling but tired.
~~~
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
From Sour Grapes, 1921
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]
Again I reply to the triple winds
running chromatic fifths of derision
outside my window:
Play louder.
You will not succeed. I am
bound more to my sentences
the more you batter at me
to follow you.
And the wind,
as before, fingers perfectly
its derisive music.
~~
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
from Sour Grapes, 1921
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]
Wanderer moon
smiling a
faintly ironical smile
at this
brilliant, dew-moistened
summer morning,
a detached
sleepily indifferent
smile, a
wanderer s smile,
if I should
buy a shirt
your color and
put on a necktie
sky blue
where would they carry me?
~~ William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) from A Book of Poems: Al que quiere!, 1917
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]
All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.
~~ William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) from Sour Grapes, 1921
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]
There is a bird in the poplars! –
It is the sun!
The leaves are little yellow fish
Swimming in the river;
The bird skims above them –
Day is on his wings.
Phoenix!
It is he that is making
The great gleam among the poplars.
It is his singing
Outshines the noise
Of leaves clashing in the wind.
_-_Poplar_Trees_-_WA1951.225.8_-_Ashmolean_Museum%20cropped.jpg)