SUSPENSE POETRY:

“SPRING AND ALL,” “FEAR,” and “THE STREET”

“Spring and All” by William Carlos Williams

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

“Fear” by Gabriel Mistral

I don’t want them to turn

my little girl into a swallow.

She would fly far away into the sky

and never fly again to my straw bed,

or she would nest in the eaves

where I could not comb her hair.

I don’t want them to turn

my little girl into a swallow.

I don’t want them to make

my little girl a princess.

In tiny golden slippers

how could she play on the meadow?

And when night came, no longer

would she sleep at my side.

I don’t want them to make

my little girl a princess.

And even less do I want them

to make her a queen.

They would put her on a throne

where I could not go to see her.

And when nighttime came

I could never rock her…

I don’t want them to make

my little girl a queen.

“The Street” by Octavio Paz

A long and silent street.

I walk in blackness and I stumble and fall

and rise, and I walk blind, my feet

stepping on silent stones and dry leaves.

Someone behind me also stepping on stones, leaves:

if I slow down, he slows:

if I run, he runs. I turn: nobody.

Everything dark and doorless.

Turning and turning among these corners

which lead forever to the street

where I pursue a man who stumbles

and rises and says when he sees me: nobody