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Home  »  Others for 1919  »  Flowers of August

Alfred Kreymborg, ed. Others for 1919. 1920.

William Carlos Williams

Flowers of August

I
DAISY

THE DAYSEYE hugging the earth

in August, ha! Spring is

gone down in purple,

weeds stand high in the corn,

the rainbeaten furrow

is clotted with sorrel

and crabgrass, the

branch is black under

the heavy mass of the leaves—

The sun is upon a

slender green stem

ribbed lengthwise.

He lies on his back—

it is a woman also—

he regards his former

majesty and

round the yellow center,

split and creviced and done into

minute flower heads, he sends out

his twenty rays—a little,

and the wind is among them

to grow cool there!

One turns the thing over

in his hand and looks

at it from the rear: brownedged,

green and pointed scales

armor his yellow.

But turn and turn

the crisp petals remain

brief, translucent, greenfastened,

barely touching at the edges:

blades of limpid seashell.

The sun has shortened his desire

to a petal’s span!

II
QUEENANNSLACE

Her body is not so white as

anemone petals nor so smooth—nor

so remote a thing. It is a field

of the wild carrot—taking

the field by force, the grass

does not rise above it.

Here is no question of whiteness,

white as can be with a purple mole

at the center of each flower.

Each flower is a hand’s span

of her whiteness. Wherever

his hand has lain there is

a tiny purple blemish. Each part

is a blossom under his touch

to which the fibres of her being

stem one by one, each to its end,

until the whole field is a

white desire, empty, a single stem,

a cluster, flower by flower,

a pious wish to whiteness gone

over—or nothing.

III

It is a small plant

delicately branched and

tapering conically

to a point, each branch

and the peak a wire for

green pods, blind lanterns

starting upward from

the stalk each way to

a pair of prickly edged blue

flowerets: it is her regard,

a little plant without leaves,

a finished thing guarding

its secret. Blue eyes—

but there are twenty looks

in one, alike as forty flowers

on twenty stems—Blue eyes

a little closed upon a wish

achieved and half lost again,

stemming back, garlanded

with green sacks of

satisfaction gone to seed,

back to a straight stem—if

one looks into you, trumpets—!

No. It is the pale hollow of

desire itself counting

over and over the moneys of

a stale achievement. Three

small lavender imploring tips

below and above them two

slender colored arrows

of disdain with anthers

between them and

at the edge of the goblet

a white lip, to drink from—!

And summer lifts her look

forty times over, forty times

over—namelessly.

IV
HEALALL

It is the daily love, grass high

they say that will cure her.

No good to reply: the sorrel never

has four leaves, if the clover

may—It is the hydraheaded pulpit,

but an impassioned one in this case,

purple, lined with white velvet

for a young priest—by what

lady’s hand? Agh it is no pulpit

but a baying dog, a kennel of

purple dogs on one leash,

fangs bared—to keep away harm

and never caring for the place:

down the torn lane

where the cows pass,

under the appletree, nodding

against high tide or in the lea of

a pasture thistle, almost blue,

never far to seek, they say

it will cure her.

V
GREAT MULLEN

One leaves his leaves at home

being a mullen and sends up a lighthouse

to peer from: I will have my way,

yellow—A mast with a lantern, ten

fifty, a hundred, smaller and smaller

as they grow more—Liar, liar, liar!

You come from her! I can smell djer-kiss

on your clothes. Ha, ha you come to me,

you—I am a point of dew on a grass-stem.

Why are you sending heat down on me

from your lantern?—You are cowdung, a

dead stick with the bark off. She is

squirting on us both. She has had her

hand on you!—Well.—She has defiled

ME.—Your leaves are dull, thick

and hairy.—Every hair on my body will

hold you off from me. You are a

dungcake, birdlime on a fencerail.—

I love you, straight, yellow,

finger of God pointing to—her!

Liar, broken weed, dungcake, you have—

I am a cricket waving his antennae

and you are high, grey and straight. Ha!

VI
BUTTERANDEGGS

It is a posture for two multiplied

into a bouquet, a kneeling mother

washing the feet of her naked infant

before crossed mirrors, shoes of

different pairs, a chinaman laughing

at a nigger, a maple mingling leaves

with an elm, it is butter and eggs:

yellow slippers with orange bows to them,

chickens and pigs in a barnyard,

not too important—the little double

favors, you and I, a shirt

handed to a naked man by his

barelegged wife, scratch my back

for me, oh and empty the slopbucket

when you go down—and get me

that flower, I can’t reach it.

A low greyleaved thing

growing in clusters, how else?—

with a swollen head—slippers for sale,

they put mirrors in those stores

to make it seem—Closely packed

in a bouquet but never quite succeeding

to be more than—a passageway to

something else.

VII
THISTLE

They should have called the thistle—

well, it is that we, we love each other.

Our heads side by side have a purple

flamebed over them. We are one, we love

ourself. The cows do not eat us nor tread

on us. It is a little like the lichen on

the blackened stones, a foaming winecup

with thorns on the handle. They say

jackasses eat them. Yes, and reindeer

eat lichen, lick them from the stones.

And we would be eaten—as England ate

Scotland? No.

It is the color they must eat if

they would have us. That offers itself

but that alone. The rest is for asses

or—forbidden. Purple! Striped bellied

flies and the black papillios are the

color-led evangels. Ah but they come

for the honey only. And so—a thistle.