Public-domain source text

Spring Strains

by William Carlos Williams

From Standard Ebooks · standardebooks/william-carlos-williams_poetry

In a tissue-thin monotone of blue-grey buds crowded erect with desire against the sky⁠— tense blue-grey twigs slenderly anchoring them down, drawing them in⁠— two blue-grey birds chasing a third struggle in circles, angles, swift convergings to a point that bursts instantly!
Vibrant bowing limbs pull downward, sucking in the sky that bulges from behind, plastering itself against them in packed rifts, rock blue and dirty orange! But⁠—
(Hold hard, rigid jointed trees!) the blinding and red-edged sun-blur⁠— creeping energy, concentrated counterforce⁠—welds sky, buds, trees, rivets them in one puckering hold! Sticks through! Pulls the whole counter-pulling mass upward, to the right, locks even the opaque, not yet defined ground in a terrific drag that is loosening the very tap-roots!
On a tissue-thin monotone of blue-grey buds two blue-grey birds, chasing a third, at full cry! Now they are flung outward and up⁠—disappearing suddenly!

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This is a source transcription from Standard Ebooks, published in Past Poetry’s public-domain archive without line-by-line editorial notes. Public-domain source edition. Availability can vary by territory.

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