William Carlos Williams

IT is a broken country,

the rugged land is

green from end to end;

the autumn has not come.

Embanked above the orchard

the hillside is a wall

of motionless green trees,

the grass is green and red.

Five days the bare sky

has stood there day and night.

No bird, no sound.

Between the trees

stillness

and the early morning light.

The apple trees

are laden down with fruit.

Among blue leaves

the apples green and red

upon one tree stand out

most enshrined.

Still, ripe, heavy,

spherical and close,

they mark the hillside.

It is a formal grandeur,

a stateliness,

a signal of finality

and perfect ease.

Among the savage

aristocracy of rocks

one, risen as a tree,

has turned

from his repose.