<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=537372" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Asphodel, That Greeny Flower</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Of asphodel, that greeny flower,<br> like a buttercup<br> upon its branching stem-<br>save that it's green and wooden-<br> I come, my sweet,<br> to sing to you.<br>We lived long together<br> a life filled,<br> if you will,<br>with flowers. So that<br> I was cheered<br> when I came first to know<br>that there were flowers also<br> in hell.<br> Today<br>I'm filled with the fading memory of those flowers<br> that we both loved,<br> even to this poor<br>colorless thing-<br> I saw it<br> when I was a child-<br>little prized among the living<br> but the dead see,<br> asking among themselves:<br>What do I remember<br> that was shaped<br> as this thing is shaped?<br>while our eyes fill<br> with tears.<br> Of love, abiding love<br>it will be telling<br> though too weak a wash of crimson<br> colors it<br>to make it wholly credible.<br> There is something<br> something urgent<br>I have to say to you<br> and you alone<br> but it must wait<br>while I drink in<br> the joy of your approach,<br> perhaps for the last time.<br>And so<br> with fear in my heart<br> I drag it out<br>and keep on talking<br> for I dare not stop.<br> Listen while I talk on<br>against time.<br> It will not be<br> for long.<br>I have forgot<br> and yet I see clearly enough<br> something<br>central to the sky<br> which ranges round it.<br> An odor<br>springs from it!<br> A sweetest odor!<br> Honeysuckle! And now<br>there comes the buzzing of a bee!<br> and a whole flood<br> of sister memories!<br>Only give me time,<br> time to recall them<br> before I shall speak out.<br>Give me time,<br> time.<br>When I was a boy<br> I kept a book<br> to which, from time<br>to time,<br> I added pressed flowers<br> until, after a time,<br>I had a good collection.<br> The asphodel,<br> forebodingly,<br>among them.<br> I bring you,<br> reawakened,<br>a memory of those flowers.<br> They were sweet<br> when I pressed them<br>and retained<br> something of their sweetness<br> a long time.<br>It is a curious odor,<br> a moral odor,<br> that brings me<br>near to you.<br> The color<br> was the first to go.<br>There had come to me<br> a challenge,<br> your dear self,<br>mortal as I was,<br> the lily's throat<br> to the hummingbird!<br>Endless wealth,<br> I thought,<br> held out its arms to me.<br>A thousand tropics<br> in an apple blossom.<br> The generous earth itself<br>gave us lief.<br> The whole world<br> became my garden!<br>But the sea<br> which no one tends<br> is also a garden<br>when the sun strikes it<br> and the waves<br> are wakened.<br>I have seen it<br> and so have you<br> when it puts all flowers<br>to shame.<br> Too, there are the starfish<br> stiffened by the sun<br>and other sea wrack<br> and weeds. We knew that<br> along with the rest of it<br>for we were born by the sea,<br> knew its rose hedges<br> to the very water's brink.<br>There the pink mallow grows<br> and in their season<br> strawberries<br>and there, later,<br> we went to gather<br> the wild plum.<br>I cannot say<br> that I have gone to hell<br> for your love<br>but often<br> found myself there<br> in your pursuit.<br>I do not like it<br> and wanted to be<br> in heaven. Hear me out.<br>Do not turn away.<br>I have learned much in my life<br> from books<br> and out of them<br>about love.<br> Death<br> is not the end of it.<br>There is a hierarchy<br> which can be attained,<br> I think,<br>in its service.<br> Its guerdon<br> is a fairy flower;<br>a cat of twenty lives.<br> If no one came to try it<br> the world<br>would be the loser.<br> It has been<br> for you and me<br>as one who watches a storm<br> come in over the water.<br> We have stood<br>from year to year<br> before the spectacle of our lives<br> with joined hands.<br>The storm unfolds.<br> Lightning<br> plays about the edges of the clouds.<br>The sky to the north<br> is placid,<br> blue in the afterglow<br>as the storm piles up.<br> It is a flower<br> that will soon reach<br>the apex of its bloom.<br> We danced,<br> in our minds,<br>and read a book together.<br> You remember?<br> It was a serious book.<br>And so books<br> entered our lives.<br>The sea! The sea!<br> Always<br> when I think of the sea<br>there comes to mind<br> the Iliad<br> and Helen's public fault<br>that bred it.<br> Were it not for that<br> there would have been<br> no poem but the world<br> if we had remembered,<br> those crimson petals<br>spilled among the stones,<br> would have called it simply<br> murder.<br>The sexual orchid that bloomed then<br> sending so many<br> disinterested<br>men to their graves<br> has left its memory<br> to a race of fools<br>or heroes<br> if silence is a virtue.<br> The sea alone<br>with its multiplicity<br> holds any hope.<br> The storm<br>has proven abortive<br> but we remain<br> after the thoughts it roused<br>to<br> re-cement our lives.<br> It is the mind<br>the mind<br> that must be cured<br> short of death's<br>intervention,<br> and the will becomes again<br> a garden. The poem<br>is complex and the place made<br> in our lives<br> for the poem.<br>Silence can be complex too,<br> but you do not get far<br> with silence.<br>Begin again.<br> It is like Homer's<br> catalogue of ships:<br>it fills up the time.<br> I speak in figures,<br> well enough, the dresses<br>you wear are figures also,<br> we could not meet<br> otherwise. When I speak<br>of flowers<br> it is to recall<br> that at one time<br>we were young.<br> All women are not Helen,<br> I know that,<br>but have Helen in their hearts.<br> My sweet,<br> you have it also, therefore<br>I love you<br> and could not love you otherwise.<br> Imagine you saw<br>a field made up of women<br> all silver-white.<br> What should you do<br>but love them?<br> The storm bursts<br> or fades! it is not<br>the end of the world.<br> Love is something else,<br> or so I thought it,<br>a garden which expands,<br> though I knew you as a woman<br> and never thought otherwise,<br>until the whole sea<br> has been taken up<br> and all its gardens.<br>It was the love of love,<br> the love that swallows up all else,<br> a grateful love,<br>a love of nature, of people,<br> of animals,<br> a love engendering<br>gentleness and goodness<br> that moved me<br> and that I saw in you.<br>I should have known,<br> though I did not,<br> that the lily-of-the-valley<br>is a flower makes many ill<br> who whiff it.<br> We had our children,<br>rivals in the general onslaught.<br> I put them aside<br> though I cared for them.<br>as well as any man<br> could care for his children<br> according to my lights.<br>You understand<br> I had to meet you<br> after the event<br>and have still to meet you.<br> Love<br> to which you too shall bow<br>along with me-<br> a flower<br> a weakest flower<br>shall be our trust<br> and not because<br> we are too feeble<br>to do otherwise<br> but because<br> at the height of my power<br>I risked what I had to do,<br> therefore to prove<br> that we love each other<br>while my very bones sweated<br> that I could not cry to you<br> in the act.<br>Of asphodel, that greeny flower,<br> I come, my sweet,<br> to sing to you!<br>My heart rouses<br> thinking to bring you news<br> of something<br>that concerns you<br> and concerns many men. Look at<br> what passes for the new.<br>You will not find it there but in<br> despised poems.<br> It is difficult<br>to get the news from poems<br> yet men die miserably every day<br> for lack<br>of what is found there.<br> Hear me out<br> for I too am concerned<br>and every man<br> who wants to die at peace in his bed<br> besides.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=William+Carlos+Williams">William Carlos Williams</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=537372" data-title="Asphodel, That Greeny Flower de William Carlos Williams" data-description="Of asphodel, that greeny flower, like a buttercup upon its branching stem- save that it's green and wooden- I come, my sweet, to sing to you. We lived long together a life filled, if you will, with flowers. So that I was cheered when I..."></div> </div> </div>

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