By the road to the contagious hospital ~ William Carlos Williams

Spring and All [By the road to the contagious hospital]

by William Carlos Williams (1883 – 1963)

I

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast-a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines—

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches—

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind—

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined—
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

But now the stark dignity of
entrance—Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken


William Carlos Williams (1883 – 1963) was a full time practicing family doctor and a celebrated poet. He is said to have practiced medicine by day and written at night. His poems of the modernist movement leave us with images that haunt us with their metaphor and emotion as the mind searches for meaning. The images are simple, but they carry us into the profound. With very few words, he captures an entire story.

In this poem, the images of the dead landscape are replaced by the images of the birth of new life. For me, it is a reminder that as we avoid the “contagious hospital” of the dying, we are also avoiding people who were once newborns full of promise.

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