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William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams

The Late Singer

Here it is spring again
and I still a young man!
I am late at my singing.
The sparrow with the black rain on his breast
has been at his cadenzas for two weeks past:
What is it that is dragging at my heart?
The grass by the back door
is stiff with sap.
The old maples are opening
their branches of brown and yellow moth-flowers.
A moon hangs in the blue
in the early afternoons over the marshes.
I am late at my singing.

#Americans #Modernism #XXCentury

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Other works by 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
Blizzard

Snow falls: years of anger following hours that float idly down — the blizzard drifts its weight
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
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 thefield by force; the grass
Postlude

NOW that I have cooled to you Let there be gold of tarnished mas… Temples soothed by the sun to ruin That sleep utterly. Give me hand for the dances,
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, by Shepard Fairey
“Libertad! Igualdad! Fraternidad!”

You sullen pig of a man you force me into the mud with your stinking ash-cart! Brother! —if we were rich
 1
A Unison

The grass is very green, my friend… and tousled, like the head of —— your grandson, yes? And the mounta… the mountain we climbed twenty years since for the last
Flowers by the Sea

When over the flowery, sharp pastu… edge, unseen, the salt ocean lifts its form—chicory and daisies tied, released, seem hardly flower… but color and the movement—or the…
 1
Asphodel, That Greeny Flower

Of asphodel, that greeny flower, like a buttercup upon its branching stem– save that it’s green and wooden– I come, my sweet,
The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain
 2
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
Sonnet in Search of an Author

Nude bodies like peeled logs sometimes give off a sweetest odor, man and woman under the trees in full excess matching the cushion of
Between Walls

the back wings of the hospital where nothing will grow lie
The Catholic Bells

Tho’ I’m no Catholic I listen hard when the bells in the yellow—brick tower of their new church ring down the leaves
a new line

unless there is a new mind there cannot be a new line



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