Sour Grapes Part 1

Sour Grapes.

by William Carlos Williams.

THE LATE SINGER

Here it is spring again and I still a young man!

I am late at my singing.

The sparrow with the black rain on his breast has been at his cadenzas for two weeks past: What is it that is dragging at my heart?

The gra.s.s by the back door is stiff with sap.

The old maples are opening their branches of brown and yellow moth-flowers.

A moon hangs in the blue in the early afternoons over the marshes.

I am late at my singing.

MARCH

I

Winter is long in this climate and spring--a matter of a few days only,--a flower or two picked from mud or from among wet leaves or at best against treacherous bitterness of wind, and sky s.h.i.+ning teasingly, then closing in black and sudden, with fierce jaws.

II

March, you remind me of the pyramids, our pyramids-- stript of the polished stone that used to guard them!

March, you are like Fra Angelico at Fiesole, painting on plaster!

March, you are like a band of young poets that have not learned the blessedness of warmth (or have forgotten it).

At any rate-- I am moved to write poetry for the warmth there is in it and for the loneliness-- a poem that shall have you in it March.

III

See!

Ashur-ban-i-pal, the archer king, on horse-back, in blue and yellow enamel!

with drawn bow--facing lions standing on their hind legs, fangs bared! his shafts bristling in their necks!

Sacred bulls--dragons in embossed brickwork marching--in four tiers-- along the sacred way to Nebuchadnezzar's throne hall!

They s.h.i.+ne in the sun, they that have been marching-- marching under the dust of ten thousand dirt years.

Now-- they are coming into bloom again!

See them!

marching still, bared by the storms from my calendar --winds that blow back the sand!

winds that enfilade dirt!

winds that by strange craft have whipt up a black army that by pick and shovel bare a procession to the G.o.d, Marduk!

Natives cursing and digging for pay unearth dragons with upright tails and sacred bulls alternately-- in four tiers-- lining the way to an old altar!

Natives digging at old walls-- digging me warmth--digging me sweet loneliness-- high enamelled walls.

IV

My second spring-- pa.s.sed in a monastery with plaster walls--in Fiesole on the hill above Florence.

My second spring--painted a virgin--in a blue aureole sitting on a three-legged stool, arms crossed-- she is intently serious, and still watching an angel with coloured wings half kneeling before her-- and smiling--the angel's eyes holding the eyes of Mary as a snake's holds a bird's.

On the ground there are flowers, trees are in leaf.

V

But! now for the battle!

Now for murder--now for the real thing!

My third springtime is approaching!

Winds!

lean, serious as a virgin, seeking, seeking the flowers of March.

Seeking flowers nowhere to be found, they twine among the bare branches in insatiable eagerness-- they whirl up the snow seeking under it-- they--the winds--snakelike roar among yellow reeds seeking flowers--flowers.

I spring among them seeking one flower in which to warm myself!

I deride with all the ridicule of misery-- my own starved misery.

Counter-cutting winds strike against me refres.h.i.+ng their fury!

Come, good, cold fellows!

Have we no flowers?

Defy then with even more desperation than ever--being lean and frozen!

But though you are lean and frozen-- think of the blue bulls of Babylon.

Fling yourselves upon their empty roses-- cut savagely!

But-- think of the painted monastery at Fiesole.

BERKET AND THE STARS

A day on the boulevards chosen out of ten years of student poverty! One best day out of ten good ones.

Berket in high spirits--"Ha, oranges! Let's have one!"

And he made to s.n.a.t.c.h an orange from the vender's cart.