POEM
Flowers by the Sea
When over the flowery, sharp pasture’s
edge, unseen, the salt ocean
lifts its form—chicory and daisies
tied, released, seem hardly flowers alone
but color and the movement—or the shape
perhaps—of relentlessness, whereas
the sea is circled and sways
peacefully upon its plantlike stem
William Carlos Williams, “Flowers by the Sea” from The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Vol 1:1909-1939. Copyright © 1938 by William Carlos Williams. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Source: The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Vol 1:1909-1939 (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1985)
