Winter Trees, Complaint

Listen to:

Winter Trees, Complaint (1:09)

by William Carlos Williams

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

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.


COMPLAINT

  They call me and I go
  It is a frozen road
  past midnight, a dust
  of snow caught
  in the rigid wheeltracks.
  The door opens.
  I smile, enter and
  shake off the cold.
  Here is a great woman
  on her side in the bed.
  She is sick,
  perhaps vomiting,
  perhaps laboring
  to give birth to
  a tenth child. Joy! Joy!
  Night is a room
  darkened for lovers,
  through the jalousies the sun
  has sent one gold needle!
  I pick the hair from her eyes
  and watch her misery
  with compassion.