William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

If I when my wife is sleepingand the baby and Kathleenare sleepingand the sun is a flame-white discin silken mistsabove shining trees,—if I in my north roomdance naked, grotesquelybefore my mirrorwaving my shirt round my headand singing softly to ...

Gagarin says, in ecstasy, he could have gone on forever he floated at and sang and when he emerged from that one hundred eight minutes off the surface of the earth he was smiling
Then he returned to take his place among the rest of us from al...

The birches are mad with green points the wood's edge is burning with their green, burning, seething—No, no, no
The birches are opening their leaves one by one
Their delicate leaves unfold cold and separate, one by one
Slender tasse...

When over the flowery, sharp pasture'sedge, unseen, the salt oceanlifts its form—chicory and daisiestied, released, seem hardly flowers alonebut color and the movement—or the shapeperhaps—of restlessness, whereasthe sea is circled and swayspeacefu...

It was an icy day
We buried the cat, then took her box and set fire to it in the back yard
Those fleas that escaped earth and fire died by the cold

II have discovered that most of the beauties of travel are due to the strange hours we keep to see them: the domes of the Church of the Paulist Fathers in Weehawken against a smoky dawn — the heart stirred — are beautiful as Saint Peters approache...

the back wingsof thehospital wherenothingwill grow
In which shinethe brokenpieces of a greenbottle

I lie here thinking of you:—- the stain of loveis upon the world
Yellow, yellow, yellowit eats into the leaves,smears with saffronthe horned branched the leanheavilyagainst a smooth purple sky
There is no lightonly a honey-thick staintha...

Ecstatic bird songs pound the hollow vastness of the sky with metallic clinkings— beating color up into it at a far edge,—beating it, beating it with rising, triumphant ardor,— stirring it into warmth, quickening in it a spreading change,— burstin...

And yet one arrives somehow, finds himself loosening the hooks of her dress in a strange bedroom— feels the autumn dropping its silk and linen leaves about her ankles
The tawdry veined body emerges twisted upon itself like a winter wind
...

Snow falls:years of anger followinghours that float idly down —the blizzarddrifts its weightdeeper and deeper for three daysor sixty years, eh
Thenthe sun
a clutter ofyellow and blue flakes —Hairy looking trees stand outin long alleysove...