SPRING STRAINS by William Carlos Williams

Tags

'scape, 1917, 7*, anchor, angle, birds, blue, branches, buds, concentration, convergence, desire, disappearance, energy, erect, flying, grey, ground, holding, orange, passing, red, right, rock, sky, Spring, sun, tap root, trees, twigs, William Carlos Williams

                                SPRING STRAINS

                In a tissue-thin monotone of blue-grey buds
                crowded erect with desire against
                the sky–
                            tense blue-grey twigs
                slenderly anchoring them down, drawing
                them in–

                            two blue-grey birds chasing
                a third struggle in circles, angles,
                swift convergings to a point that bursts
                instantly!

                            Vibrant bowing limbs
                pull downward, sucking in the sky
                that bulges from behind, plastering itself
                against them in packed rifts, rock blue
                and dirty orange!

                                                                                But–
                (Hold hard, rigid jointed trees!)
                the blinding and red-edged sun-blur–
                creeping energy, concentrated
                counterforce – welds sky, buds, trees,
                rivets them in one puckering hold!
                Sticks through! Pulls the whole
                counter-pulling mass upward, to the right,
                locks even the opaque, not yet defined
                ground in a terrific drag that is
                loosening the very tap-roots!

                On a tissue-thin monotone of blue-grey buds
                two blue-grey birds, chasing a third,
                at full cry! Now they are
                flung outward and up – disappearing suddenly!

 

from Al Que Quiere, 1917

the cacophany of a single moment – all instruments loosening-up, scaling, tensing, waiting for the grand inaugural middle ‘C’ – all held together in a fidgety bag; the shabby audacity of this piece – ‘let’s not just have vignettes, let’s also have local, tectonic landscapes’ – made my young eyes work, I had to read it several times successively to hold together all the strands, and then he lets me off, I finally ‘got’ the three birds disappearing … you don’t hold it all together, you don’t; there’s no need to; William Carlos Williams was a crafty master

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

birds wormhole: {Ellen Terry’s house}
blue wormhole: SUMMER SONG by William Carlos Williams
branches & sky wormhole: LOVE SONG by William Carlos Williams
grey wormhole: glancing up from the text / searching for ground …
orange wormhole: I
passing wormhole: tram
red wormhole: Bridgnorth
Spring wormhole: city streets
sun & trees & William Carlos Williams wormhole: DANSE RUSSE by William Carlos Williams

 

Advertisements

Bridgnorth

Tags

2017, 5*, blue, Bridgnorth, castle, change, flowers, ice cream, pink, red, time, yellow

                      Bridgnorth

                      at almost a quarter past
                the castle gate got ruined and
                      leant

                      stepped up
                the outer face with soundbites of yellowflowers
                      red pink

                      through time
                so what sauce do I want on my rum ‘n’ raisin, blue
                      bubblegum

 

a beautiful town in the NW Midlands; higher and lower; you get to walk up hundreds of iron-worn steps, and at the top you can watch the grease-soaked teeth and cables of the funicular make the journey of life instead

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

blue wormhole: olive trees
change & time wormhole: amniotic avenue
pink wormhole: skeins of candy pink and lilac
red wormhole: where did the silence go
yellow wormhole: Sheffield Park Gardens

 

where did the silence go

Tags

2017, 6*, breathing, brick, Eastbourne, gables, passing, question, red, seagull, silence, sound, streetlight, the British Empire, time, traffic, trees, windows, winter

                where did the silence go
                along the rows of gables
                and chimes on the hour

                calls the seagull on the cornice
                to the seagull on the lamp post
                once, looking one way, twice,

                three times as the traffic
                feeds through the roundabout
                and winter trees branch

                and fibrillate before the
                turrets and windows of
                past red-brick Empire

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

breathing wormhole: with all love released
Eastbourne & red & time wormhole: growth
passing wormhole: olive trees
seagull & sound & streetlight wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
silence & trees wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Making Hay
windows wormhole: quiet river
winter wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – snow

 

growth

Tags

2016, 3*, abstract, brick, capitalism, civilisation, commerce, division, Eastbourne, exploitation, growth, identity, number, philanthropy, red, slum, society, tiles, time, zero

                redbrick high and
                tile-rounded turret

                ancient civilisation
                advanced according

                to climbing number
                compared to zero

                for abstract of finery
                and ideal of commerce

                with philanthropic swirl
                from slum outlands of

                growth

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

capitalism wormhole: London refugee march – 120915
Eastbourne wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
identity wormhole: animus rises – powieview #37
red wormhole: with all love released
society wormhole: frame
time wormhole: ‘when travelling astrally …’

 

with all love released

Tags

2016, 8*, air, anatta, birdcall, blue, breathing, Buddha, change, civilisation, dark, earth, echo, finding, glow, groundlessness, impermanence, inspiration, karma, letting go, looking, lost, love, purple, red, shadow, shelf, time

                I still look for you on the
                shelves and by the way

                head tilted to one side
                feeling in the shadows

                under foliage between
                stems for something lost

                shining darkly red
                pushing up through

                purple earth – fold of
                blue shadow – I knew

                you’d be here somewhere
                without remembering

                where I’d let you go,
                mutated through cycle

                as wax will wane; and
                I know when I find you

                I’ll notice the glow
                where it shouldn’t be

                obvious when discovered –
                I knew it! – but now

                my daylight groping is
                done; I have found no

                ground to stand on
                I must let you go again,

                my friends, and face
                the only task … alone

                I could track back
                through centuries of

                millennia and tectonic
                inch and breathe the

                same air, amid forming
                civilisations, the only

                air replenishable, as
                the man who strolled

                through parklands and
                birdcall, all possible

                echoes collapsed, and
                I could breathe that

                same heir both in and
                out with diminishing

                return dispersing the
                hanging proliferation of

                ténèbres hautes and
                redoubtable as they may

                seem, as known as I
                am not, with all love released

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

air & Buddha wormhole: Sheffield Park Gardens
blue & time wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
breathing & letting go wormhole: travelling // arrival
change wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – reaping
echo wormhole: looking / ridiculous
groundlessness wormhole: 1964
looking wormhole: between
love wormhole: cinnamon / milkshake
purple wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
red wormhole: and // do your ears burn red?
shadow wormhole: low afternoon

 

and // do your ears burn red?

Tags

2015, 5*, blond, clothes, dark, ears, eating, face, girl, hands, hotel, identity, kitchen, life, night, passing, red, sweat, Sylvia Plath, talking, time, twilight, water, writing

                and do your ears burn red, or do you,
                washing dishes, with those same clothes
                rotting under your armpits, still talk
                about visigoths to your pathetic self

                and divine nothing?   I put you in a book,
                because a girl with blond hair told me
                about you one night eating grapes in the
                twilight kitchen, the planes of her face

                growing darker; two years ago, with those
                same clothes, stood in the doorway of the
                old hotel watching a girl named Ann, with
                wet hair walk beside Lake George; acrid,

                now, with the stench of dried sweat and
                your long black hair, your hands puffed
                and creased from the hot water; tell me,
                do your ears burn red?

 

bevelled up into bas-relief out of entry 120. of The Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

girl wormhole: snapshots about Totnes
hands wormhole: place
hotel wormhole: constant hummm
identity & life wormhole: looking back over the tack / and jibe of my life I / notice there is / a fetch // after all … / but certainly not / where I had planned / or where I thought / I’d been
kitchen wormhole: out
night wormhole: humm
passing wormhole: passing
red wormhole: Bexhill 140215
Sylvia Plath wormhole: at table 21 in the garden centre thinking to / replicate Hughes’ exercise for Plath about / the Yew Tree
talking wormhole: Cocktails in 1951
time wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
twilight wormhole: good going into / that gentle night
water wormhole: all the sandstone / reflections in the / marble-blue troughs
writing wormhole: found

 

Bexhill 140215

Tags

1920s, 1935, 2015, 5*, ageing, balcony, Bexhill, de la Warr Pavilion, eating, grey, horizon, line, looking, model, photographer, poem, portrait, promenade, red, sea, sun, waiting, wife

                                Bexhill 140215

                                sugar blues necksweat
                                I need to manage what I eat
                                as I age
                sitting in the de la Warr Pavilion café est. 1935

                                looking for a poem
                                between the clean lines on the balcony,
                                … waiting
                for his wife, trying the zoom lens onto the promenade

                                of a photographer
                                trying positions of his model
                                in fashion-red
                hooded coat and flower heads on her hat from the 1920s

                                on the sun-grey sea
                                with wide horizon

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

grey & sun wormhole: Cocktails in 1951
horizon wormhole: ‘God, who am I …?’
looking wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
promenade wormhole: London Hearts – poewieview #4
red wormhole: leaves
sea wormhole: concordance
waiting wormhole: just

 

leaves

Tags

2014, 4*, coat, hope, leaves, life, notice, passing, red, ripple, roads, scarf, texture, traffic, Wadhurst, white

                                                settling easy with the ripples and billow

                                of hope and assure leaves
                                notice of sudden texture

                by the way

                                on the other side
                                of the busy road

                                the red coat and
                                white scarf waving

                                carrying
                                shopping

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

leaves & white wormhole: Cocktails in 1951
life wormhole: red / lacquer / door
passing & red wormhole: glide
roads wormhole: a nice grey woollen picnic blanket
texture wormhole: the sitting room

 

red / lacquer / door

Tags

2014, 5*, bay window, child, doors, Hastings, life, red, step, streets, Victorian houses, view

                                               red
                                       lacquer
                                            door

                there is much up steep street
                where Victorian double bay

                stands proud to view over all
                steps too much for child to race

                wide-steps up and up while the
                buggy is meticulously folded

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

child wormhole: lime crocs
doors wormhole: I turn to wake up
life wormhole: found
red wormhole: twilight / and parasols down / within minutes
streets wormhole: between
Victorian houses wormhole: landscape of cloud over London / with differing depths of grey

 

twilight / and parasols down / within minutes

Tags

2014, 4*, beach, book, Carol, Gran Canaria, hands, head, horizon, knees, leg, lime, parasols, portrait, red, skin, strawberry, twilight, yogurt

                              twilight
                and parasols down
                   within minutes

                Carol lays on the lime mat
                head to the horizon one hand

                scurfing the other holding
                the book open leg out

                straight one knee up perfectly
                skin-red like fraise yogurt

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

beach wormhole: the evening
Carol wormhole: I turn to wake up
hands wormhole: woman / has worked in the gym / got a build
horizon wormhole: Infantino / district of Gotham
lime wormhole: 1968
red wormhole: walk from Castleton to Hope
twilight wormhole: writing: // in turn