Home ⇒ 📌William Carlos Williams ⇒ Willow Poem
Willow Poem
It is a willow when summer is over,
A willow by the river
From which no leaf has fallen nor
Bitten by the sun
Turned orange or crimson.
The leaves cling and grow paler,
Swing and grow paler
Over the swirling waters of the river
As if loth to let go,
They are so cool, so drunk with
The swirl of the wind and of the river-
Oblivious to winter,
The last to let go and fall
Into the water and on the ground.
(2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
Related poetry:
- The Willow On sweet young earth where the myrtle presses, Long we lay, when the May was new; The willow was winding the moon in her tresses, The bud of the rose was told with dew. And now on the brittle ground I’m lying, Screaming to die with the dead year’s dead; The stem of the rose […]...
- In The Willow Shade I sat beneath a willow tree, Where water falls and calls; While fancies upon fancies solaced me, Some true, and some were false. Who set their heart upon a hope That never comes to pass, Droop in the end like fading heliotrope The sun’s wan looking-glass. Who set their will upon a whim Clung to […]...
- The Willow Who shall sing a simple ditty about the Willow, Dainty-fine and delicate as any bending spray That dandles high the dainty bird that flutters there to trill a Tremulously tender song of greeting to the May. Bravest, too, of all the trees! none to match your daring, First of greens to greet the Spring and […]...
- Willow And I grew up in patterned tranquillity, In the cool nursery of the young century. And the voice of man was not dear to me, But the voice of the wind I could understand. But best of all the silver willow. And obligingly, it lived With me all my life; it’s weeping branches Fanned my […]...
- TO THE WILLOW-TREE Thou art to all lost love the best, The only true plant found, Wherewith young men and maids distrest And left of love, are crown’d. When once the lover’s rose is dead Or laid aside forlorn, Then willow-garlands, ’bout the head, Bedew’d with tears, are worn. When with neglect, the lover’s bane, Poor maids rewarded […]...
- Poem Of Night 1 I move my hand over Slopes, falls, lumps of sight, Lashes barely able to be touched, Lips that give way so easily It’s a shock to feel underneath them The bones smile. Muffled a little, barely cloaked, Zygoma, maxillary, turbinate. 2 I put my hand On the side of your face, You lean your […]...
- Come Out with Me There’s sun on the river and sun on the hill. . . You can hear the sea if you stand quite still! There’s eight new puppies at Roundabout Farm- And I saw an old sailor with only one arm! But everyone says, “Run along!” (Run along, run along!) All of them say, “Run along! I’m […]...
- Poem On His Birthday In the mustardseed sun, By full tilt river and switchback sea Where the cormorants scud, In his house on stilts high among beaks And palavers of birds This sandgrain day in the bent bay’s grave He celebrates and spurns His driftwood thirty-fifth wind turned age; Herons spire and spear. Under and round him go Flounders, […]...
- Song from Aella O SING unto my roundelay, O drop the briny tear with me; Dance no more at holyday, Like a running river be: My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed All under the willow-tree. Black his cryne as the winter night, White his rode as the summer snow, Red his face as the morning light, […]...
- Notice What This Poem Is Not Doing The light along the hills in the morning Comes down slowly, naming the trees White, then coasting the ground for stones to nominate. Notice what this poem is not doing. A house, a house, a barn, the old Quarry, where the river shrugs How much of this place is yours? Notice what this poem is […]...
- Cold Poem Cold now. Close to the edge. Almost Unbearable. Clouds Bunch up and boil down From the north of the white bear. This tree-splitting morning I dream of his fat tracks, The lifesaving suet. I think of summer with its luminous fruit, Blossoms rounding to berries, leaves, Handfuls of grain. Maybe what cold is, is the […]...
- Poem In October It was my thirtieth year to heaven Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood And the mussel pooled and the heron Priested shore The morning beckon With water praying and call of seagull and rook And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall Myself to set foot That second In […]...
- Gacela of the Dead Child Each afternoon in Granada, Each afternoon, a child dies. Each afternoon the water sits down And chats with its companions. The dead wear mossy wings. The cloudy wind and the clear wind Are two pheasants in flight through the towers, And the day is a wounded boy. Not a flicker of lark was left in […]...
- Noon I bend to the ground To catch Something whispered, Urgent, drifting Across the ditches. The heaviness of Flies stuttering In orbit, dirt Ripening, the sweat Of eggs. There are Small streams The width ofa thumb Running in the villages Of sheaves, whole Eras of grain Wakening on The stalks, a roof That breathes over My […]...
- Poem With Refrains The opening scene. The yellow, coal-fed fog Uncurling over the tainted city river, A young girl rowing and her anxious father Scavenging for corpses. Funeral meats. The clever Abandoned orphan. The great athletic killer Sulking in his tent. As though all stories began With someone dying. When her mother died, My mother refused to attend […]...
- Parting at a Wine-shop in Nan-king A wind, bringing willow-cotton, sweetens the shop, And a girl from Wu, pouring wine, urges me to share it. With my comrades of the city who are here to see me off; And as each of them drains his cup, I say to him in parting, Oh, go and ask this river running to the […]...
- Mayakovsky In New York: A Found Poem New York: You take a train that rips through versts. It feels as if the trains were running over your ears. For many hours the train flies along the banks Of the Hudson about two feet from the water. At the stops, Passengers run out, buy up bunches of celery, And run back in, chewing […]...
- The Road That Runs Beside The River follows the river as it bends Along the valley floor, Going the way it must. Where water goes, so goes the road, If there’s room (not in a ravine, Gorge), the river On your right or left. Left is better: when you’re driving, It’s over your elbow across The road. You see the current, which […]...
- Poem (In the morning, when it was raining) In the morning, when it was raining, Then the birds were hectic and loudy; Through all the reign is fall’s entertaining; Their singing was erratic and full of disorder: They did not remember the summer blue Or the orange of June. They did not think at all Of the great red and bursting ball Of […]...
- A Calendar of Sonnets: February Still lie the sheltering snows, undimmed and white; And reigns the winter’s pregnant silence still; No sign of spring, save that the catkins fill, And willow stems grow daily red and bright. These are days when ancients held a rite Of expiation for the old year’s ill, And prayer to purify the new year’s will: […]...
- Summer Remember the days of our first happiness, How strong we were, how dazed by passion, Lying all day, then all night in the narrow bed, Sleeping there, eating there too: it was summer, It seemed everything had ripened At once. And so hot we lay completely uncovered. Sometimes the wind rose; a willow brushed the […]...
- A spring poem from bion One asketh: “Tell me, Myrson, tell me true: What’s the season pleaseth you? Is it summer suits you best, When from harvest toil we rest? Is it autumn with its glory Of all surfeited desires? Is it winter, when with story And with song we hug our fires? Or is spring most fair to you […]...
- Little Summer Poem Touching The Subject Of Faith Every summer I listen and look Under the sun’s brass and even Into the moonlight, but I can’t hear Anything, I can’t see anything Not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up, Nor the leaves Deepening their damp pleats, Nor the tassels making, Nor the shucks, nor the cobs. And still, […]...
- On Being Asked For A War Poem I think it better that in times like these A poet’s mouth be silent, for in truth We have no gift to set a statesman right; He has had enough of medding who can please A young girl in the indolence of her youth, Or an old man upon a winter’s night....
- Night Poem There is nothing to be afraid of, It is only the wind Changing to the east, it is only Your father the thunder Your mother the rain In this country of water With its beige moon damp as a mushroom, Its drowned stumps and long birds That swim, where the moss grows On all sides […]...
- Temporary Poem Of My Time Hebrew writing and Arabic writing go from east to west, Latin writing, from west to east. Languages are like cats: You must not stroke their hair the wrong way. The clouds come from the sea, the hot wind from the desert, The trees bend in the wind, And stones fly from all four winds, Into […]...
- Poem (Faithful to your commands, o consciousness) Poem Faithful to your commands, o consciousness, o Beating wings, I studied The roses and the muses of reality, The deceptions and the deceptive elation of the redness of the growing morning, And all the greened and thomed variety of the vines of error, which begin by promising Everything and more than everything, and then […]...
- Poem Reaching For Something we walk through a calligraphy of hats slicing off foreheads Ace-deuce cocked, they slant, razor sharp, clean through imagination, our Spirits knee-deep in what we have forgotten entrancing our bodies now to Dance, like enraptured water lilies The rhythm in liquid strides of certain looks Eyeballs rippling through breezes Riffing choirs of trees, where a […]...
- The poem The poem That I chose for you Is simple, As are all my singing poems. It has the trace of a veil, A little balsam, And a taste of the honey Of lies. There is also The coming end of summer When heat scorches the meadow And the quick waters Of the river Cease to […]...
- The Brook I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down a valley. By thirty hills I hurry down, Or slip between the ridges, By twenty thorpes, a little town, And half a hundred bridges. Till last by Philip’s farm I flow To join […]...
- From the Roof This wild night, gathering the washing as if it were flowers animal vines twisting over the line and Slapping my face lightly, soundless merriment In the gesticulations of shirtsleeves, I recall out of my joy a night of misery Walking in the dark and the wind over broken earth, Halfmade foundations and unfinished drainage trenches […]...
- All Ye Joyful Sing all ye joyful, now sing all together! The wind’s in the tree-top, the wind’s in the heather; The stars are in blossom, the moon is in flower, And bright are the windows of night in her tower. Dance all ye joyful, now dance all together! Soft is the grass, and let foot be like […]...
- Legs rivers and age with landbound legs a wish For the easy flow of a river – not The clambering up crags to seek More favour from the sun (or long-haired moon) harped for Since those sparks of who am i First clicked through consciousness How the river sidles round Rocks blocking the painful straight Seems to brush aside […]...
- A Coloured Print by Shokei It winds along the face of a cliff This path which I long to explore, And over it dashes a waterfall, And the air is full of the roar And the thunderous voice of waters which sweep In a silver torrent over some steep. It clears the path with a mighty bound And tumbles below […]...
- The Well of St. Keyne A Well there is in the west country, And a clearer one never was seen; There is not a wife in the west country But has heard of the Well of St. Keyne. An oak and an elm-tree stand beside, And behind doth an ash-tree grow, And a willow from the bank above Droops to […]...
- The Ball Poem What is the boy now, who has lost his ball, What, what is he to do? I saw it go Merrily bouncing, down the street, and then Merrily over-there it is in the water! No use to say ‘O there are other balls’: An ultimate shaking grief fixes the boy As he stands rigid, trembling, […]...
- Memory Of Sun Memory of sun seeps from the heart. Grass grows yellower. Faintly if at all the early snowflakes Hover, hover. Water becoming ice is slowing in The narrow channels. Nothing at all will happen here again, Will ever happen. Against the sky the willow spreads a fan The silk’s torn off. Maybe it’s better I did […]...
- Last Poem of my 45th Year I thought of how a whale’s white ribs Could choke the sky’s blue neck, Massive vertebrae half-buried in sand, And how a keel cleaves the sea While the wind zephyrs canvas to swell And propel the long black ship toward shore, Heaven in a blue mussel shell, smooth As the firmament. I believe there is […]...
- 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
- The Gardener IX: When I Go Alone at Night When I go alone at night to my Love-tryst, birds do not sing, the wind Does not stir, the houses on both sides Of the street stand silent. It is my own anklets that grow loud At every step and I am ashamed. When I sit on my balcony and listen For his footsteps, leaves […]...