William Carlos William

"Spring and All"

"The Descent of Winter"



"Asphodel, that greeny flower"

Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
like a buttercup
upon its branching stem–
save that it's green and wooden–
I come, my sweet,
to sing to you.
We lived long together
a life filled,
if you will,
with flowers. So that
I was cheered
when I came first to know
that there were flowers also
in hell.
Today
I'm filled with the fading memory of those flowers
that we both loved,
even to this poor
colorless thing–
I saw it
when I was a child–
little prized among the living
but the dead see,
asking among themselves:
What do I remember
that was shaped
as this thing is shaped?
while our eyes fill
with tears.
Of love, abiding love
it will be telling
though too weak a wash of crimson
colors it
to make it wholly credible.
There is something
something urgent
I have to say to you
and you alone
but it must wait
while I drink in
the joy of your approach,
perhaps for the last time.
And so
with fear in my heart
I drag it out
and keep on talking
for I dare not stop.
Listen while I talk on
against time.
It will not be
for long.
I have forgot
and yet I see clearly enough
something
central to the sky
which ranges round it.
An odor
springs from it!
A sweetest odor!
Honeysuckle! And now
there comes the buzzing of a bee!
and a whole flood
of sister memories!
Only give me time,
time to recall them
before I shall speak out.
Give me time,
time.
When I was a boy
I kept a book
to which, from time
to time,
I added pressed flowers
until, after a time,
I had a good collection.
The asphodel,
forebodingly,
among them.
I bring you,
reawakened,
a memory of those flowers.
They were sweet
when I pressed them
and retained
something of their sweetness
a long time.
It is a curious odor,
a moral odor,
that brings me
near to you.
The color
was the first to go.
There had come to me
a challenge,
your dear self,
mortal as I was,
the lily's throat
to the hummingbird!
Endless wealth,
I thought,
held out its arms to me.
A thousand tropics
in an apple blossom.
The generous earth itself
gave us lief.
The whole world
became my garden!
But the sea
which no one tends
is also a garden
when the sun strikes it
and the waves
are wakened.
I have seen it
and so have you
when it puts all flowers
to shame.
Too, there are the starfish
stiffened by the sun
and other sea wrack
and weeds. We knew that
along with the rest of it
for we were born by the sea,
knew its rose hedges
to the very water's brink.
There the pink mallow grows
and in their season
strawberries
and there, later,
we went to gather
the wild plum.
I cannot say
that I have gone to hell
for your love
but often
found myself there
in your pursuit.
I do not like it
and wanted to be
in heaven. Hear me out.
Do not turn away.
I have learned much in my life
from books
and out of them
about love.
Death
is not the end of it.
There is a hierarchy
which can be attained,
I think,
in its service.
Its guerdon
is a fairy flower;
a cat of twenty lives.
If no one came to try it
the world
would be the loser.
It has been
for you and me
as one who watches a storm
come in over the water.
We have stood
from year to year
before the spectacle of our lives
with joined hands.
The storm unfolds.
Lightning
plays about the edges of the clouds.
The sky to the north
is placid,
blue in the afterglow
as the storm piles up.
It is a flower
that will soon reach
the apex of its bloom.
We danced,
in our minds,
and read a book together.
You remember?
It was a serious book.
And so books
entered our lives.
The sea! The sea!
Always
when I think of the sea
there comes to mind
the Iliad
and Helen's public fault
that bred it.
Were it not for that
there would have been
no poem but the world
if we had remembered,
those crimson petals
spilled among the stones,
would have called it simply
murder.
The sexual orchid that bloomed then
sending so many
disinterested
men to their graves
has left its memory
to a race of fools
or heroes
if silence is a virtue.
The sea alone
with its multiplicity
holds any hope.
The storm
has proven abortive
but we remain
after the thoughts it roused
to
re-cement our lives.
It is the mind
the mind
that must be cured
short of death's
intervention,
and the will becomes again
a garden. The poem
is complex and the place made
in our lives
for the poem.
Silence can be complex too,
but you do not get far
with silence.
Begin again.
It is like Homer's
catalogue of ships:
it fills up the time.
I speak in figures,
well enough, the dresses
you wear are figures also,
we could not meet
otherwise. When I speak
of flowers
it is to recall
that at one time
we were young.
All women are not Helen,
I know that,
but have Helen in their hearts.
My sweet,
you have it also, therefore
I love you
and could not love you otherwise.
Imagine you saw
a field made up of women
all silver-white.
What should you do
but love them?
The storm bursts
or fades! it is not
the end of the world.
Love is something else,
or so I thought it,
a garden which expands,
though I knew you as a woman
and never thought otherwise,
until the whole sea
has been taken up
and all its gardens.
It was the love of love,
the love that swallows up all else,
a grateful love,
a love of nature, of people,
of animals,
a love engendering
gentleness and goodness
that moved me
and that I saw in you.
I should have known,
though I did not,
that the lily-of-the-valley
is a flower makes many ill
who whiff it.
We had our children,
rivals in the general onslaught.
I put them aside
though I cared for them.
as well as any man
could care for his children
according to my lights.
You understand
I had to meet you
after the event
and have still to meet you.
Love
to which you too shall bow
along with me-
a flower
a weakest flower
shall be our trust
and not because
we are too feeble
to do otherwise
but because
at the height of my power
I risked what I had to do,
therefore to prove
that we love each other
while my very bones sweated
that I could not cry to you
in the act.
Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
I come, my sweet,
to sing to you!
My heart rouses
thinking to bring you news
of something
that concerns you
and concerns many men. Look at
what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
despised poems.
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
Hear me out
for I too am concerned
and every man
who wants to die at peace in his bed
besides

Guillaume Apollinaire

"Zone",

"Le voyageur"

"Vendemiaire"

"L'enfer"

"Il y a"

Le Bestiaire, ou Cortège d'Orphée, con ilustraciones de Raoul Dufy (1911).

"Les villes..."

"L'amour le dédain l'esperance"

Je t’ai prise contre ma poitrine comme une colombe qu’une petite fille étouffe
sans le savoir

Je t’ai prise avec toute ta beauté ta beauté plus riche que tous les placers de la

Californie ne le furent au temps de la fièvre de l’or

J’ai empli mon avidité sensuelle de ton sourire de tes regards de tes frémissements

J’ai eu à moi à ma disposition ton orgueil même quand je te tenais courbée et que

tu subissais ma puissance et ma domination

J’ai cru prendre tout cela ce n’était qu’un prestige

Et je demeure semblable à Ixion après qu’il eut fait l’amour avec le fantôme de

nuées fait à la semblance de celle qu’on appelle Héra ou bien Junon l’invisible

Et qui peut prendre qui peut saisir des nuages qui peut mettre la main sur un mirage

Et qu’il se trompe celui-là qui croit emplir ses bras de l’azur céleste

J’ai bien cru prendre toute ta beauté et je n’ai eu que ton corps

Le corps hélas n’a pas l’éternité

Le corps a la fonction de jouir mais il n’a pas l’amour

Et c’est en vain maintenant que j’essaie d’étreindre ton esprit

Il fuit il me fuit de toutes parts comme un nœud de couleuvres qui se dénoue

Et tes beaux bras sur l’horizon lointain sont des serpents couleur d’aurore qui se

lovent en signe d’adieu

Je reste confus je demeure confondu

Je me sens las de cet amour que tu dédaignes

Je suis honteux de cet amour que tu méprises tant

Le corps ne va pas sans l’âme

Et comment pourrais-je espérer rejoindre ton corps de naguère puisque ton âme

était si éloignée de moi

Et que le corps a rejoint l’âme

Comme font tous les corps vivants

O toi que je n’ai possédée que morte

Et malgré tout cependant que parfois je regarde au loin si vient le vaguemestre

Et que j’attends comme un délice ta lettre quotidienne mon cœur bondit comme

un chevreuil lorsque je vois venir le messager

Et j’imagine alors des choses impossibles puisque ton cœur n’est pas avec moi

Et j’imagine alors que nous allons nous embarquer tous deux tout seuls peut-être

trois et que jamais personne au monde ne saurait rien de notre cher voyage vers rien mais vers ailleurs et pour toujours

Sur cette mer plus bleue encore plus bleue que tout le bleu du monde

Sur cette mer où jamais l’on ne crierait Terre

Pour ton attentive beauté mes chants plus purs que toutes les paroles monteraient plus libres

encore que les flots

Est-il trop tard mon cœur pour ce mystérieux voyage

La barque nous attend c’est notre imagination

Et la réalité nous rejoindra un jour

Si les âmes se sont rejointes

Pour le trop beau pèlerinage

Allons mon cœur d’homme la lampe va s’éteindre
Verses-y ton sang

Allons ma vie alimente cette lampe d’amour

Allons canons ouvrez la route

Et qu’il arrive enfin le temps victorieux le cher temps du retour

Je donne à mon espoir mes yeux ces pierreries

Je donne à mon espoir mes mains palmes de victoire

Je donne à mon espoir mes pieds chars de triomphe

Je donne à mon espoir ma bouche ce baiser

Je donne à mon espoir mes narines qu’embaument les fleurs de la mi-mai

Je donne à mon espoir mon cœur en ex-voto

Je donne à mon espoir tout l’avenir qui tremble comme une petite lueur

au loin dans la forêt