SPRING STRAINS
by: William Carlos Williams
(1883-1963)
- N 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 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!
MORE POEMS BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS |
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