The Hunters in the Snow

The over-all picture is winter
icy mountains
in the background the return

from the hunt it is toward evening
from the left
sturdy hunters lead in

their pack the inn-sign
hanging from a
broken hinge is a stag a crucifix

between his antlers the cold
inn yard is
deserted but for a huge bonfire

that flares wind-driven tended by
women who cluster
about it to the right beyond

the hill is pattern of skaters
Brueghel the painter
concerned with it all has chosen

a winter-struck bush for his
foreground to
complete the picture.



William Carlos Williams, Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems, 1962

This Is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold



William Carlos Williams

XXII

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.



William Carlos Williams, Spring and All, 1923

Death

He's dead
the dog won't have to
sleep on his potatoes
any more to keep them
from freezing

he's dead
the old bastard–
He's a bastard because

there's nothing
legitimate in him any
more
he's dead
He's sick-dead

he's
a godforsaken curio
without
any breath in it

He's nothing at all
he's dead
shrunken up to skin

Put his head on
one chair and his
feet on another and
he'll lie there
like an acrobat–

Love's beaten. He
beat it. That's why
he's insufferable–
because
he's here needing a
shave and making love
an inside howl
of anguish and defeat–

He's come out of the man
and he's let
the man
go–
the liar

Dead
his eyes
rolled up out of
the light –a mockery

which
love cannot touch–

just bury it
and hide its face
for shame.



William Carlos Williams

The Widow's Lament in Springtime

Sorrow is my own yard
where the new grass
flames as it has flamed
often before but not
with the cold fire
that closes round me this year.
Thirtyfive years
I lived with my husband.
The plumtree is white today
with masses of flowers.
Masses of flowers
load the cherry branches
and color some bushes
yellow and some red
but the grief in my heart
is stronger than they
for though they were my joy
formerly, today I notice them
and turned away forgetting.
Today my son told me
that in the meadows,
at the edge of the heavy woods
in the distance, he saw
trees of white flowers.
I feel that I would like
to go there
and fall into those flowers
and sink into the marsh near them.



William Carlos Williams