Young Sycamore

By William Carlos Williams

I must tell you

this young tree

whose round and firm trunk

between the wet

pavement and the gutter

(where water

is trickling) rises

bodily

into the air with

one undulant

thrust half its height-

and then

dividing and waning

sending out

young branches on

all sides-

hung with cocoons

it thins

till nothing is left of it

but two

eccentric knotted

twigs

bending forward

hornlike at the top