Tennessee Williams at his very best

Nonno’s Poem

From

The Night of the Iguana

Tennessee Williams

How calmly does the olive branch

Observe the sky begin to blanch

Without a cry, without a prayer

With no betrayal of despair

Some time while light obscures the tree

The zenith of its life will be

Gone past forever and from thence

A second history will commence

A chronicle no longer gold

A bargaining with mist and mould

And finally the broken stem

The plummeting to earth, and then

An intercourse not well designed

For beings of a golden kind

Whose native green must arch above

The earth's obscene corrupting love

And still the ripe fruit and the branch

Observe the sky begin to blanch

Without a cry, without a prayer

With no betrayal of despair

Oh courage! Could you not as well

Select a second place to dwell

Not only in that golden tree

But in the frightened heart of me