a flower so crooked & obscure?

i was gonna write something about last week, a list or movie review, but everything seems so trivial compared to what julie turley has been through.

i'm so glad she's okay & blogging again.  i hope she'll share some of the journal she kept during that epic time.

one thing that didn't feel trivial to me this week was "the yellow flower" by william carlos williams.  more and more i realize he's my poetic ancestor, and i owe a lot to his influence.  this is a later poem, and sounds broken--it is broken, actually--look at the lines.  he was a little bit broken

as we all are.

so, in honor of the broken

but still breathing,

a poem:


The Yellow Flower

by William Carlos Williams

What shall I say, because talk I must?

                        That I have found a cure

                                                for the sick?

I have found no cure

                        for the sick       .

                                                but this crooked flower

which only to look upon

                        all men

                                                are cured.  This

is that flower

                        for which all men

                                                sing secretly their hymns

of praise.  This

                        is that sacred

                                                flower!

Can this be so?

                        A flower so crooked

                                                and obscure?  It is

a mustard flower

                        and not a mustard flower,

                                                a single spray

topping the deformed stem

                        of fleshy leaves

                                                in this freezing weather

under glass.

An ungainly flower and

                        an unnatural one,

                                                in this climate;  what

can be the reason

                        that it has picked me out

                                                to hold me, openmouthed,

rooted before this window

                        in the cold,

                                                my will

drained from me

                        so that I have only eyes

                                                for these yellow,

twisted petals   .           ?

That the sight,

                        though strange to me,

                                                must be a common one,

is clear:  there are such flowers

                        with such leaves

                                                native to some climate

which they can call

                        their own.

But why the torture

                        and the escape through

                                                the flower?  It is

as if Michelangelo

                        had conceived the subject

                                                of his Slaves from this

-- or might have done so.

                        And did he not make

                                                the marble bloom?  I

am sad

                        as he was sad

                                                in his heroic mood.

But also

                        I have eyes

                                                that are made to see and if

they see ruin for myself

                        and all that I hold

                                                dear, they see

also

                        through the eyes

                                                and through the lips

and tongue the power

                        to free myself

                                                and speak of it, as

Michelangelo through his hands

            `           had the same, if greater,

                                                power.

Which leaves, to account for,

                        the tortured bodies

                                                of

the slaves themselves

                        and

                                                the tortured body of my flower

which is not a mustard flower at all

                        but some unrecognized

                                                and unearthly flower

for me to naturalize

                        and acclimate

                                                and choose it for my own.