THE WIDOW’S LAMENT IN SPRINGTIME

William Carlos Williams

Sorrow is my own yard where the new grass flames as it has flamed often before but not with the cold fire that closes round me this year.

Thirty-five years

I lived with my husband. The plumtree is white today with masses of flowers. Masses of flowers load the cherry branches and colour some bushes yellow and some red but the grief in my heart is stronger than they for though they were my joy

formerly, today I notice them and turn away forgetting. Today my son told me that in the meadows, at the edge of the heavy woods in the distance,

he saw trees of white flowers.

I feel that I would like to go there and fall into those flowers and sink into the marsh near them.