YOUNG SYCAMORE by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1927, 6*, air, branches, division, growth, gutter, pavement, sound, sycamore, trunk, twigs, water, William Carlos Williams, youth

                                YOUNG SYCAMORE

                I must tell you
                this younf tree
                whose round and firm trunk
                between the wet

                pavement and the gutter
                (where water
                is trickling) rises
                bodily

                into the air with
                one undulant
                thrust half its height–
                and then

                dividing and waning
                sending out
                young branches on
                all sides–

                hung with cocoons–
                it thins
                till nothing is left of it
                but two

                eccentric knotted
                twigs
                bending forward
                hornlike at the top

 

from Poems, 1927: its the indigeogravity that I like of justwhatistherehere … only

 

 

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

air wormhole: La Route, Effet d’Hiver, 1872
branches wormhole: pursued
sound wormhole: St. Erasmus in Bishop Islip’s Chapels, 1796
water & William Carlos Williams wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XXII by William Carlos Williams

 

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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