Among the rain and lights I saw the figure 5 in gold on a red firetruck moving with weight and urgency tense unheeded to gong clangs siren howls and wheels rumbling through the dark city.
Where this text comes from
First published in Sour Grapes (1921). This date is uncertain. First located printing; an earlier periodical printing has not been ruled out. [1]
Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-12.
Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/william-carlos-williams_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).
Earlier sources (6)
This poem as JSON or plain text . Line anchors #L1–#L14.
Cite this poem
William Carlos Williams (1883–1963).
“The Great Figure.” First published in Sour Grapes (1921).
Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/william-carlos-williams/the-great-figure/.
Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.
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