#gradations

(To the Memory of Charles Demuth)

White suffused with red more rose than crimson — all a color the petals flare back from the stooping craters of those flowers as from a wind rising — And though the light that enfolds and pierces them discovers blues and yellows there also — and crimson's a dull word beside such play — yet the effect against this winter where they stand — is crimson —

It is miraculous that flower should rise by flower alike in loveliness — as though mirrors of some perfection could never be too often shown — silence holds them — in that space. And color has been construed from emptiness to waken there — But the form came gradually. The plant was there before the flowers as always — the leaves, day by day changing. In September when the first pink pointed bud still bowed below, all the leaves heart-shaped were already spread — quirked and green and stenciled with a paler green irregularly across and round the edge —

Upon each leaf it is a pattern more of logic than a purpose links each part to the rest, an abstraction playfully following centripetal devices, as of pure thought — the edge tying by convergent, crazy rays with the center — where that dips cupping down to the upright stem — the source that has splayed out fanwise and returns upon itself in the design thus decoratively —

Such are the leaves freakish, of the air as thought is, of roots dark, complex from subterranean revolutions and rank odors waiting for the moon — The young leaves coming among the rest are more crisp and deeply cupped the edges rising first impatient of the slower stem — the older level, the oldest with the edge already fallen a little backward — the stem alone holding the form stiffly a while longer —

Under the leaf, the same though the smooth green is gone. Now the ribbed design — if not the purpose, is explained. The stem's pink flanges, strongly marked, stand to the frail edge, dividing, thinning through the pink and downy mesh — as the round stem is pink also — cranking to penciled lines angularly deft through all, to link together the unnicked argument to the last crinkled edge — where the under and the over meet and disappear and the air alone begins to go from them — the conclusion left still blunt, floating if warped and quaintly flecked whitened and streaked resting upon the tie of the stem —

But half hidden under them such as they are it begins that must put thought to rest —

wakes in tinted beaks still raising the head and passion is loosed —

its small lusts addressed still to the knees and to sleep — abandoning argument

lifts through the leaves day by day and one day opens!

The petals! the petals undone loosen all five and swing up

The flower flows to release —

Fast within a ring where the compact agencies of conception

lie mathematically ranged round the hair-like sting —

From such a pit the color flows over a purple rim

upward to the light! the light! all around — Five petals

as one to flare, inverted a full flower each petal tortured

eccentrically the while, warped edge jostling half-turned edge

side by side until compact, tense evenly stained to the last fine edge

an ecstasy from the empurpled ring climbs up (though firm there still)

each petal by excess of tensions in its own flesh all rose —

rose red standing until it bends backward upon the rest, above,

answering ecstasy with excess all together acrobatically

not as if bound (though still bound) but upright as if they hung

from above to the streams with which they are veined and glow — the frail fruit by its frailty supreme opening in the tense moment to no bean no completion no root no leaf and no stem but color only and a form —

It is passion earlier and later than thought that rises above thought at instant peril — peril itself a flower that lifts and draws it on —

Frailer than level thought more convolute rose red highest the soonest to wither blacken and fall upon itself formless —

And the flowers grow older and begin to change, larger now less tense, when at the full relaxing, widening the petals falling down the color paling through violaceous to tinted white —

The structure of the petal that was all red beginning now to show from a deep central vein other finely scratched veins dwindling to that edge through which the light more and more shows fading through gradations immeasurable to the eye —

The day rises and swifter briefer more frailly relaxed than thought that still holds good — the color draws back while still the flower grows the rose of it nearly all lost a darkness of dawning purple paints a deeper afternoon —

The day passes in a horizon of colors all meeting less severe in loveliness the petals fallen now well back till flower touches flower all round at the petal tips merging into one flower —

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The Crimson Cyclamen

William Carlos Williams  1883-1963

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Paysage : Le Ciel relié Dessin numérique / digital drawing, 2018 103 x 103 cm – (40 x 40’’)   (catalogue n° : RR 18.44) ©RGV 2018

Un tirage «Beaux-Arts» signé, numéroté et encadré (+ scellés ARTtrust) One “Fine arts” print signed, numbered and framed (+ ARTtrust seals)

Don’t answer that. ^

Hah! :P

Okay so since I’m on mobile let me see if I can get my links right…

Gradations: Chapter 4, FF or AO3

Behind Closed Doors: FF or AO3

Mitzvah: Chapter 10, FF or AO3