Flowers For Socrates

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD

The first week of December – three weeks before the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, or the Summer Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere.

In many northern places, winter has already arrived: the summer birds left some time ago for the warmth of southern climes, the trees are bare, and the first snow has fallen. But whether the view from your window is icicles or kids on bicycles, we have all left spring or autumn behind, and the natural rhythm of Life slows down – it’s only humans who keep on racing, trying to catch the Future. The planet’s other land and sky dwellers are settling down for a winter’s nap, or a long, lazy day in the sun.

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This week’s poets each have something particular to say about this time of year. First up is William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), an American physician, novelist and poet, who managed to combine life as a small town doctor with being part of the modern imagist revolution in American prose and poetry. Though born in the U.S., his father was English and his mother was Puerto Rican, giving him a rich and diverse cultural heritage to draw upon. Many of his contemporaries became expatriates in Europe, developing new ways of writing out of their disaffection with America, yet still being out-of-place abroad. The work of William Carlos Williams fits with the expats, but also stands apart.

Winter Trees

All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.

Blizzard

Snow:
years of anger following
hours that float idly down —
the blizzard
drifts its weight
deeper and deeper for three days
or sixty years, eh? Then
the sun! a clutter of
yellow and blue flakes —
Hairy looking trees stand out
in long alleys
over a wild solitude.
The man turns and there —
his solitary track stretched out
upon the world.

“Winter Trees” and “Blizzard” from Sour Grapes: A Book of Poems (1921) by William Carlos Williams, reprinted in 2017  

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