Sour Grapes

Primrose

Yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow!

It is not a color.

It is summer!

It is the wind on a willow,

the lap of waves, the shadow

under a bush, a bird, a bluebird,

three herons, a dead hawk

rotting on a pole--

Clear yellow!

It is a piece of blue paper

in the grass or a threecluster of

green walnuts swaying, children

playing croquet or one boy

fishing, a man

swinging his pink fists

as he walks--

It is ladysthumb, forget-me-nots

in the ditch, moss under

the flange of the carrail, the

wavy lines in split rock, a

great oaktree--

It is a disinclination to be

five red petals or a rose, it is

a cluster of birdsbreast flowers

on a red stem six feet high,

four open yellow petals

above sepals curled

backward into reverse spikes--

Tufts of purple grass spot the

green meadow and clouds the sky.

William Carlos Williams

Queen Anne's Lace

Her body is not so white as

anemone petals nor so smooth--nor

so remote a thing. It is a field

of the wild carrot taking

the field by force; the grass

does not raise above it.

Here is no question of whiteness,

white as can be, with a purple mole

at the center of each flower.

Each flower is a hand's span

of her whiteness. Wherever

his hand has lain there is

a tiny purple blemish. Each part

is a blossom under his touch

to which the fibres of her being

stem one by one, each to its end,

until the whole field is a

white desire, empty, a single stem,

a cluster, flower by flower,

a pious wish to whiteness gone over--

or nothing.

William Carlos Williams

Great Mullen

One leaves his leaves at home

beomg a mullen and sends up a lighthouse

to peer from: I will have my way,

yellow--A mast with a lantern, ten

fifty, a hundred, smaller and smaller

as they grow more--Liar, liar, liar!

You come from her! I can smell djer-kiss

on your clothes. Ha! you come to me,

you, I am a point of dew on a grass-stem.

Why are you sending heat down on me

from your lantern?--You are cowdung, a

dead stick with the bark off. She is

squirting on us both. She has has her

hand on you!--well?--She has defiled

ME.--Your leaves are dull, thick

and hairy.--Every hair on my body will

hold you off from me. You are a

dungcake, birdlime on a fencerail.--

I love you, straight, yellow

finger of God pointing to--her!

Liar, broken weed, dungcake, you have--

I am a cricket waving his antennae

and you are high, grey and straight. Ha!

William Carlos Williams

Waiting

When I am alone I am happy.

The air is cool. The sky is

flecked and splashed and wound

with color. The crimson phalloi

of the sassafras leaves

hang crowded before me

in shoals on the heavy branches.

When I reach my doorstep

I am greeted by

the happy shrieks of my children

and my heart sinks.

I am crushed.

Are not my children as dear to me

as falling leaves or

must one become stupid

to grow older?

It seems much as if Sorrow

had tripped up my heels.

Let us see, let us see!

What did I plan to say to her

when it should happen to me

as it has happened now?

William Carlos Williams

The Hunter

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

Arrival

And yet one arrives somehow,

finds himself loosening the hooks of

her dress

in a strange bedroom--

feels the autumn

dropping its silk and linen leaves

about her ankles.

The tawdry veined body emerges

twisted upon itself

like a winter wind . . . !

William Carlos Williams

To a Friend Concerning Several Ladies

You know there is not much

that I desire, a few chrysanthemums

half lying on the grass, yellow

and brown and white, the

talk of a few people, the trees,

an expanse of dried leaves perhaps

with ditches among them.

But there comes

between me and these things

a letter

or even a look--well placed,

you understand,

so that I am confused, twisted

four ways and--left flat,

unable to lift the food to

my own mouth:

Here is what they say: Come!

and come! and come! And if

I do not go I remain stale to

myself and if I go--

I have watched

the city from a distance at night

and wondered why I wrote no poem.

Come! yes,

the city is ablaze for you

and you stand and look at it.

And they are right. There is

no good in the world except out of

a woman and certain women alone

for certain. But what if

I arrive like a turtle,

with my house on my back or

a fish ogling from under water?

It will not do. I must be

steaming with love, colored

like a flamingo. For what?

To have legs and a silly head

and to smell, pah! like a flamingo

that soils its own feathers behind.

Must I go home filled

with a bad poem?

And they say:

Who can answer these things

till he has tried? Your eyes

are half closed, you are a child,

oh, a sweet one, ready to play

but I will make a man of you and

with love on his shoulder--!

And in the marshes

the crickets run

on the sunny dike's top and

make burrows there, the water

reflects the reeds and the reeds

move on their stalks and rattle drily.

William Carlos Williams

Youth and Beauty

I bought a dishmop--

having no daughter--

for they had twisted

fine ribbons of shining copper

about white twine

and made a tousled head

of it, fastened it

upon a turned ash stick

slender at the neck

straight, tall--

when tied upright

on the brass wallbracket

to be a light for me

and naked

as a girl should seem

to her father.

William Carlos Williams

The Thinker

My wife's new pink slippers

have gay pompons.

There is not a spot or a stain

on their satin toes or their sides.

All night they lie together

under her bed's edge.

Shivering I catch sight of them

and smile, in the morning.

Later I watch them

descending the stair,

hurrying through the doors

and round the table,

moving stiffly

with a shake of their gay pompons!

And I talk to them

in my secret mind

out of pure happiness.

William Carlos Williams

The Disputants

Upon the table in their bowl

in violent disarray

of yellow sprays, green spikes

of leaves, red pointed petals

and curled heads of blue

and white among the litter

of the forks and crumbs and plates

the flowers remain composed.

Coolly their colloquy continues

above the coffee and loud talk

grown frail as vaudeville.

William Carlos Williams

The Tulip Bed

The May sun--whom

all things imitate--

that glues small leaves to

the wooden trees

shone from the sky

through bluegauze clouds

upon the ground.

Under the leafy trees

where the suburban streets

lay crossed,

with houses on each corner,

tangled shadows had begun

to join

the roadway and the lawns.

With excellent precision

the tulip bed

inside the iron fence

upreared its gaudy

yellow, white and red,

rimmed round with grass,

reposedly.

William Carlos Williams

The Birds

The world begins again!

Not wholly insufflated

the blackbirds in the rain

upon the dead topbranches

of the living tree,

stuck fast to the low clouds,

notate the dawn.

Their shrill cries sound

announcing appetite

and drop among the bending roses

and the dripping grass.

William Carlos Williams

The Nightingales

My shoes as I lean

unlacing them

stand out upon

flat worsted flowers

under my feet.

Nimbly the shadows

of my fingers play

unlacing

over shoes and flowers.

William Carlos Williams

Spouts

In this world of

as fine a pair of breasts

as ever I saw

the fountain in

Madison Square

spouts up of water

a white tree

that dies and lives

as the rocking water

in the basin

turns from the stonerim

back upon the jet

and rising there

reflectively drops down again.

William Carlos Williams

Blueflags

I stopped the car

to let the children down

where the streets end

in the sun

at the marsh edge

and the reeds begin

and there are small houses

facing the reeds

and the blue mist in the distance

with grapevine trellises

with grape clusters

small as strawberries

on the vines

and ditches

running springwater

that continue the gutters

with willows over them.

The reeds begin

like water at a shore

their pointed petals waving

dark green and light.

But blueflags are blossoming

in the reeds

which the children pluck

chattering in the reeds

high over their heads

which they part

with bare arms to appear

with fists of flowers

till in the air

there comes the smell

of calmus

from wet, gummy stalks.

William Carlos Williams

The Widow's Lament in Springtime

Sorrow is my own yard

where the new grass

flames as it has flamed

often before but not

with the cold fire

that closes round me this year.

Thirtyfive years

I lived with my husband.

The plumtree is white today

with masses of flowers.

Masses of flowers

load the cherry branches

and color some bushes

yellow and some red

but the grief in my heart

is stronger than they

for though they were my joy

formerly, today I notice them

and turn away forgetting.

Today my son told me

that in the meadows,

at the edge of the heavy woods

in the distance, he saw

trees of white flowers.

I feel that I would like

to go there

and fall into those flowers

and sink into the marsh near them.

William Carlos Williams

Light Hearted William

Light hearted William twirled

his November moustaches

and, half dressed, looked

from the bedroom window

upon the spring weather.

Heigh-ya! sighed he gaily

leaning out to see

up and down the street

where a heavy sunlight

lay beyond some blue shadows.

Into the room he drew

his head again and laughed

to himself quietly

twirling his green moustaches.

William Carlos Williams

Light Hearted Author

The birches are mad with green points

the wood's edge is burning with their green,

burning, seething--No, no, no.

The birches are opening their leaves one

by one. Their delicate leaves unfold cold

and separate, one by one. Slender tassels

hang swaying from the delicate branch tips--

Oh, I cannot say it. There is no word.

Black is split at once into flowers. In

every bog and ditch, flares of

small fire, white flowers!--Agh,

the birches are mad, mad with their green.

The world is gone, torn into shreds

with this blessing. What have I left undone

that I should have undertaken?

O my brother, you redfaced, living man

ignorant, stupid whose feet are upon

this same dirt that I touch--and eat.

We are alone in this terror, alone,

face to face on this road, you and I,

wrapped by this flame!

Let the polished plows stay idle,

their gloss already on the black soil.

But that face of yours--!

Answer me. I will clutch you. I

will hug you, grip you. I will poke my face

into your face and force you to see me.

Take me in your arms, tell me the commonest

thing that is in your mind to say,

say anything. I will understand you--!

It is the madness of the birch leaves opening

cold, one by one.

My rooms will receive me. But my rooms

are no longer sweet spaces where comfort

is ready to wait on me with its crumbs.

A darkness has brushed them. The mass

of yellow tulips in the bowl is shrunken.

Every familiar object is changed and dwarfed.

I am shaken, broken against a might

that splits comfort, blows apart

my careful partitions, crushes my house

and leaves me--with shrinking heart

and startled, empty eyes--peering out

into a cold world.

In the spring I would be drunk! In the spring

I would be drunk and lie forgetting all things.

Your face! Give me your face, Yang Kue Fei!

your hands, your lips to drink!

Give me your wrists to drink--

I drag you, I am drowned in you, you

overwhelm me! Drink!

Save me! The shad bush is in the edge

of the clearing. The yards in a fury

of lilac blossoms are driving me mad with terror.

Drink and lie forgetting the world.

And coldly the birch leaves are opening one by one.

Coldly I observe them and wait for the end.

And it ends.

William Carlos Williams

The Lonely Street

School is over. It is too hot

to walk at ease. At ease

in light frocks they walk the streets

to while the time away.

They have grown tall. They hold

pink flames in their right hands.

In white from head to foot,

with sidelong, idle look--

in yellow, floating stuff,

black sash and stockings--

touching their avid mouths

with pink sugar on a stick--

like a carnation each holds in her hand--

they mount the lonely street.

William Carlos Williams

The Great Figure

Among the rain

and lights

I saw the figure 5

in gold

on a red

firetruck

moving

tense

unheeded

to gong clangs

siren howls

and wheels rumbling

through the dark city.

William Carlos Williams

B A C K