Tag: William Carlos Williams

Outside My Window

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icicles3

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  “January”

 

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It’s been uncharacteristically cold here for nearly a month and this morning the northeast wind is back, pummeling away at our windows.

This is cold that descends from the Arctic to blast through the strongest Carhartt clothing, sneak under drafty doors, and freeze pipes not left dripping.  It leaves no one untouched and unbitten with universal freezer burn, mocking us with its discordant chilly chords.

A bitter cold snap ensures even independent fair-weather individualists must become companionable when the going gets rugged, mandating shelter with others for survival.  It can even mean forced companionship with those we ordinarily avoid, with whom we have little in common, with whom we disagree and even quarrel, with whom sharing a hug or snuggling for warmth would be unimaginable.

Our nation is in just such a cold snap today, terribly and bitterly divided about the inauguration to come, each of us feeling battered and pummeled by the winds of change.  If we together don’t come in out of the deep freeze, we each will perish alone.

Hope is all we have left as so much hot air is being generated by derisive voices, even in the chillest land…

featherfrost

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –
And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –
I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.
~Emily Dickinson
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Just So You Know, You Are Forgiven

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silverplums

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
~William Carlos Williams “This is Just to Say”

Who needs an icebox
when the plums
hang heavy
in the night-cooled orchard

dotted with dew
glistening
in the spare pink light
of dawn

so ripe
and so ready
their golden flesh
warming in the sun.
~EPG

plumrain

A Hand’s Span of Whiteness

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Her body is not so white as
anemony 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 “Queen-Anne’s Lace”
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Sometimes all I know
is my own bleeding central blemish,
my impure core.
What else is there in this July snowstorm
of complex compound blooms,
forming a protective corona around
an imperfect purple heart in the middle?
Only when
the light glows from the Son
can the rest of me
wholly illuminate.
~EPG
swirl
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Begin to Awaken

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frost125144

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By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast — a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines —

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches —

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind —

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf

One by one objects are defined —
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

But now the stark dignity of
entrance — Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted they
grip down and begin to awaken
~William Carlos Williams “Spring and All”

It is still January
with much of the country
in deep freeze,
covered in snow and ice
and bitter wind chill.
Yet outside begins to awaken–
tender buds swelling,
bulbs breaking through soil,
in reentry to the world
from the dark and cold.
Like a mother who holds
the mystery of her quickening belly,
so hopeful and marveling,
she knows soon and very soon
there will be spring.

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iriswinter

A Deeper Well

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ivycling

The whole process is a lie, 
                  unless, 
                          crowned by excess, 
      it break forcefully, 
                  one way or another, 
                              from its confinement-- 
      or find a deeper well...
                 I love you 
                              or I do not live 
      at all.
 At our age the imagination 
                  across the sorry facts 
                              lifts us 
      to make roses 
                  stand before thorns. 
                              Sure 
      love is cruel 
                  and selfish 
                              and totally obtuse-- 
      At least, blinded by the light, 
                  young love is. 
                              But we are older, 
      I to love 
                  and you to be loved, 
                              we have, 
      no matter how, 
                  by our wills survived 
                              to keep 
      the jeweled prize 
                  always 
                              at our fingertips. 
      We will it so 
                  and so it is 
                              past all accident.

~William Carlos Williams, excerpts from “The Ivy Crown”
written at age 72, published in Journey to Love

How can we, at our age,
who have treated love as no accident,
looking into a well
of such depth and richness,
how can we tell the young
to will their love to survive –
to strive through thorns and briars,
though tears wept and flesh torn,
to come to cherish the prize
of rose and ivy crown.

It is everything that matters,
this crown of love
we have willed and worn together:

I love you or I do not live at all.
I to love and you to be loved.

Wish to Whiteness

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swirlHer body is not so white as
anemony 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 — “Queen Anne’s Lace”
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queenannes

Stroking the Cat

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photo by Lea Gibson
photo by Lea Gibson

“Outside, the north wind,
coming and passing,
swelling and dying,
lifts the frozen sand drives it
a-rattle against the lidless windows
and we may
dear
sit stroking the cat stroking the cat
and smiling sleepily, prrrr.”
~William Carlos Williams

(This is for our daughter who is off to college,  whose cat Jose continues to look for her around the house as we are completely inadequate substitutes when it comes to kitty cuddling.)

Edge of a Petal

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photo of trillium by Josh Scholten

“It is at the edge of a petal that love waits.”
― William Carlos Williams

It is too easy to look for love only in the heart of things, usually up front and center, at once showpiece and show off.    We think of love as reverberating from deep within,  loud enough for all the world to hear and know it is so.

But as I advance on life’s road, I have found love quietly waiting at the periphery, fragile and so easily torn–it ends up clinging to the edges of our lives.  It is ever-present, protects and cherishes, fed by fine little veins which branch out to the tender margins.

It is on that delicate edge we dwell, waiting to be fed and oh so grateful.

photo by Josh Scholten

Summer Song

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“In summer, the song sings itself.”
―William Carlos Williams
A couple days spent at the Pacific Ocean in mid-summer is a rare concert experience: the song sung by the constancy of the tides, the hymn of waves rolling and tumbling over the sand, the cries of thousands of gulls and other marine birds as they flock and swoop en masse.

Today a different flock appeared on the beach–a small group of nuns in traditional habits on holiday, walking through the cold salt water in their lace-up black shoes, waves lapping up their skirts, soaking them to their mid-calves. Their smiles were huge; I could hear their hearts singing praises.

And so: summer sings with wet feet, happy faces, and flowing soaring wings of freedom.

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