I’m sitting at my desk, drinking hot tea of
. chamomile,
. peppermint,
. licorice,
and honey. There’s a book open, in the pool of lamp light. It’s William Carlos Williams’s Collected Poems, at “Asphodel.” Reading it is like descending, step by step, into a deep sorrow, from
. root,
. to leaf,
. to flower,
The one you hope will never open and unfold. The one you hope you will never see blossoming, billowing. Williams writes:
The poem
. if it reflects the sea
. reflects only
its dance
. upon that profound depth
. where
it seems to triumph.
. The bomb puts an end
. to all that.
I am reminded
. that the bomb
. also
is a flower