The Widow's Lament in SpringtimeAuthor(s): William Carlos WilliamsSource: Poetry, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Jan., 1922), pp. 202-203Published by: Poetry FoundationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20573416 .

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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse

SPOUTS

In this world of as fine a pair of breasts as ever I saw, the fountain in

Madison Square spouts up of water a white tree, that dies and lives as the rocking water in the basin turns from the stone rim back upon the jet and rising there reflectively drops down again.

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. Thirty-five years I lived with my husband.

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William Carlos Williams

The plum tree 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 turn 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

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