The Widow's Lament in Springtime

                                          
                                                              Sorrow is my own yard:
                                                              I sink as though I were
                                                              a diving bell--
                                                              I am 65-years-old
                                                              and I am failing
                                                              like the elderly voices
                                                              I remember
                                                              from childhood.
                                                              I am Flossie
                                                              of Paterson
                                                              land of brown dirt
                                                              blown in
                                                              and I will leave
                                                              this planet
                                                              soon.



[Flossie Williams was the wife of William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), who spent almost his entire life in his native New Jersey.  Williams was a medical doctor, poet, novelist, essayist, and playwright. With Ezra Pound and H.D., Williams was a leading poet of the Imagist movement and often wrote of American subjects and themes. Though his career was initially overshadowed by other poets, Williams became an inspiration to the Beat generation, and particularly Allen Ginsberg, in the 1950s and 60s]