Subscribe: by Email | in Reader

Spring and all -- William Carlos Williams

Guest poem submitted by Aseem Kaul:
(Poem #1846) Spring and all
 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
It's Spring!! And what better way to sing the spring's advent but with this
glorious Williams' poem.

I love the way this poem captures the sense of dead things coming to life,
that stirring, quickening sensation that makes Spring such a magical time of
the year. The way the season seems to take hold of everything ("rooted they
/ grip down and begin to awaken"), and the world seems to take on colour and
shape again.

The best adjective I can think of to describe this poem is the one Williams
gives us himself: contagious.

Aseem.

36 comments: ( or Leave a comment )

Post a Comment