Thomas Lanier “Tennessee” Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three foremost playwrights of 20th-century American drama.
Williams wrote his first play in 1930, but his work did not gain much traction until 1944 with the success of The Glass Menagerie. His next plays, including A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), and The Night of the Iguana (1961), were also successful and widely acclaimed. His drama A Streetcar Named Desire is often numbered on short lists of the finest American plays of the 20th century.
THIS HOUR
Tennessee Williams
At break of dawn the shape of life
Is chiselled with a keener knife,
And angularities emerge From the illusion of a curve.
This is the hour that imparts A special nudity to hearts,
When every secret thing is known Inward to the very bone.
No mist of rain nor veil of snow
Can blur this stark intaglio
Of sculptured hill and hollowed plain,
Poignant as thought, distinct as pain.
This is the keen recurrent edge Of shuttling time.
The frosty hedge, The arrowed song of birds betray
The sword unsheathed in break of day.
This is the hour when men who dare
Shake lightning from their unbound hair,
And cherish in their last retreat
The will to bear, the strength to meet
Unflinchingly and with iron heart
The steel that smites the breast apart!
====
WE HAVE NOT LONG TO LOVE
Tennessee Williams
We have not long to love.
Light does not stay.
The tender things are those we fold away.
Coarse fabrics are the ones for common wear.
In silence I have watched you comb your hair.
Intimate the silence, dim and warm.
I could but did not, reach to touch your arm.
I could, but do not, break that which is still.
(Almost the faintest whisper would be shrill.)
So moments pass as though they wished to stay.
We have not long to love.
A night. A day….