On Gay Wallpaper

The green-blue ground
is ruled with silver lines
to say the sun is shining

And on this moral sea
of grass or dreams lie flowers
or baskets of desires

Heaven knows what they are
between cerulean shapes
laid regularly round

Matros roses and tridentate
leaves of gold
threes, threes and threes

Three roses and three stems
the basket floating
standing in the norms of blue

Repeated to the ceiling
to the windows
where the day blows in

The scalloped curtains to
the sound of rain

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The Lily

The branching head of
tiger-lilies through the window
in the air

And in the air a numming-bird
is still on whirring wings
above the flowers

By spotted petals curling back
and tongues that hang
the air is seen

It's raining
water's caught
among the curled back petals

Caught and held
and there's a lily
are blossoming

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The Source

1.

The slope of the heavy woods
pales and disappears
in a wall of mist that hides
the edge above whose peak
last night the moon

But it is morning and a new light
marks other trings
a pasture which begins

where silhouettes of scrub
and balsams stand uncertainly

On whose green three maples
are distinctly pressed
beside a red barn

with new shingles in the old
all cancelled by

A triple elm's inverted
lichen mottled
triple thighs from which
whisps of twigs
droop with sharp leaves

Which shake in the crotch
brushing the stained bark
ritually

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BANK 39

SLIDE 126

THREE POEMS

BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

ON GAY WALLPAPER

Mat roses and tridentate
leaves of gold
threes, threes and threes

Three roses and three stems
the basket floating
standing in the horns of blue

THE LILY