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 young 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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looking ahead

Tags

2015, 20th century, 8*, age, attention, cypress, dark, daughter, dress, duty, eyes, facade, father, field, fields, green, hair, horizon, house, jaw, land, left, lifetimes, medals, mouth, portrait, Remembrance, sienna, sky, smile, standing, war, white, youth

                                                looking ahead

                at 18 he peered frightened and gentle –
                the high forehead and round jaw of all
                his youth, but that his mouth held duty

                faintly pursed on the left, in reserve and
                to attention, although the epaulettes were
                (the wings of a choirboy) – at the strips

                and strips of field and fields of umber
                and sienna and the deepest darkest green,
                as high as the land was wide, and it was

                wide, to the white-washed house perched
                on the higher horizon flanked by European
                cypresses, at home in the fields; at three

                she looked above the horizon, hair in all
                direction to the sky, the purse to the left,
                in attention and wan smile from above

                the ruffled dress (soon to be outgrown with
                every crumple-ene); the medals were worn
                on the left side, the eyes up to the right;

                they stood together to attention, in profile
                before the wet facades of eleventh hour,
                eyes forward, eyes down, pursed and still

 

three photographs in the house of an old friend: her father when newly enrolled in the army shortly before World War II – he served in Africa; herself in her then-best dress in the very early 1960s; father and daughter standing on a wet street collecting for Remembrance Day …

 

 

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

20th century wormhole: ‘God, who am I …?’
attention & smile wormhole: dear Lucy
daughter wormhole: mother and daughter
eyes wormhole: addictive
father & lifetimes wormhole: granny
field wormhole: walk from Castleton to Hope
green & white wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
hair wormhole: immeasurable love
horizon wormhole: Bexhill 140215
house wormhole: slightly / uphill
mouth wormhole: over-pink cagoule
sky wormhole: low afternoon
war wormhole: memorial

 

I can say / that I do all sorts of dance

Tags

2012, blink, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, dancing, identity, living, notice, rejoinder, tea, youth

 

 

 

                                                              I can say
                                              that I do all sorts of dance

                                but actually
                I just sit round the edge
                                              and wish I wasn’t there at all
                                collecting juxtapositions

                you asked me to dance*
                                but I only really know to dance
with a twist of notice
                                              and a blink of linger …

                                as I wandered
                through the days thinking of rejoinder
                                I stirred a cup of tea
                                              the bag twirled
                                and clung to the spoon
                                but I kept on
                stirring more slowly about the edge
                                and the bag
just spun at first then trailed
                                even after I lifted out the spoon
                and added milk

Student: Is it that hope and fear have to fade away before the –
Trungpa Rinpoche: before the dance can take place. Yes, definitely.
Student: What you’re saying is that you have to take the first step …
Trungpa Rinpoche: Yes, you have to be pushed into it …
Student: Are you pushing?
Trungpa Rinpoche: I think so**

 

* I started writing this with Sarah Jane Jacobson who used to run a blog on WordPress; I kept on demurring that she was too young and energetic for me, so it came to nothing; I’ve just re-found my parts and doodled with them bittersweetly
** selected exchanges between Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and students during the Crazy Wisdom Seminar at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, December 1972 (compiled into ‘Crazy Wisdom‘, Shambhala, 1991, page 35)

 

 

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

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche wormhole: first a mishap then clear vision
dancing wormhole: sight / seeing
identity wormhole: Detective Comics #345
living wormhole: the endless acts of life
tea wormhole: dawn