Queen Anne's Lace

William Carlos Williams 1883 (Rutherford) – 1963 (Rutherford)



Her body is not so white as
anemone petals nor so smooth--nor
so remote a thing. It is a field
of the wild carrot taking
thefield by force; the grass
does not raise above it.
Here is no question of whiteness,
white as can be, with a purple mole
at the center of each flower.
Each flower is a hand's span
of her whiteness. Wherever
his hand has lain there is
a tiny purple blossom under his touch
to which the fibres of her being
stem one by one, each to its end,
until the whole field is a
white desire, empty, a single stem,
a cluster, flower by flower,
a pious wish to whiteness gone over--
or nothing.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 08, 2023

36 sec read
168

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCDEFGHIJIKLDMNOIID
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 612
Words 121
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 20

William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams was a Latino-American poet closely associated with modernism and imagism. more…

All William Carlos Williams poems | William Carlos Williams Books

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