Arizona
The Windmills
The windmills, like great sunflowers of steel,
Lift themselves proudly over the straggling houses ;
And at their feet the deep blue-green alfalfa
Cuts the desert like the stroke of a sword.
Yellow melon flowers
Crawl beneath the withered peach-trees ;
A date-palm throws its heavy fronds of steel
Against the scoured metallic sky.
The houses, doubled-roofed for coolness,
Cower amid the manzanita scrub.
A man with jingling spurs
Walks heavily out of a vine-bowered doorway,
Mounts his pony, rides away.
The windmills stare at the sun.
The yellow earth cracks and blisters.
Everything is still.
[...]
John Gould Fletcher's sequence "Arizona" containing the poem "The Windmills" was published in the 1916 Some Imagist Poets anthology. To read this poem in full in this publication context, follow the links below: