William Carlos Williams
FROM "PATERSON: BOOK II"
Signs everywhere of birds nesting, while
in the air, slow, a crow zigzags
with heavy wings before the wasp-thrusts
of smaller birds circling about
him
Walking:-
he leaves the path, finds hard going
across field, stubble and matted brambles
seeming a pasture-but no pasture .
--old furrows, to say labor sweated or
had sweated here
a flame,
spent.
The file-sharp grass
When! from before
his
feet, half tripping,
picking a way, there starts
a flight of empurpled wings!
-invisibly created (their
jackets dust-gray) from the dust kindled
to sudden ardor!
They fly away, churring! until
their strength spent they plunge
to the coarse cover again and disappear
-but leave, livening the mind, a flashing
of wings and a churring song
AND a grasshopper of red basalt, boot-long,
tumbles from the core of
his
mind,
a rubble-bank disintegrating beneath a
tropic downpour
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