Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems
Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems,
Vintage Feb 1990
Every time
the bucks went clattering
Over
Oklahoma
A firecat
bristled in the way.
Wherever
they went,
They went
clattering,
Until they
swerved
In a swift,
circular lines
To the
right,
Because of
the firecat.
Or until
they swerved
In a swift,
circular line
To the left,
Because of
the firecat.
(Earthy
Anecdote, Harmonium)
And I
remembered the cry of the peacocks.
(Domination
of Black, Harmonium)
One must
have a mind of winter
To regard
the frost and the boughs
Of the
pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have
been cold a long time
To behold
the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces
rough in the distant glitter
Of the
January sun; and not to think
Of any
misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound
of a few leaves,
Which is the
sound of the land
Full of the
same wind
That is
blowing in the same bare place
For the
listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing
himself, beholds
Nothing that
is not there and the nothing that is.
(The Snow
Man,, Harmonium, complete)
A red bird
flies across the golden floor.
It is a red
bird that seeks out his choir
Among the
choirs of wind and wet and wing.
(Le Monocle
de Mon Oncle, Harmonium)
Alas! Have
all the barbers lived in vain
That not one
curl in nature has survived?
(Le Monocle
de Mon Oncle, Harmonium)
And that
whatever noise the motion of the waves
Made on the
sea-weeds and the covered stones
Disturbed
not even the most idle ear.
(Hibiscus on
the Sleeping Shores, Harmonium)
What was the
purpose of his pilgrimage,
Whatever
shape it took in Crispin’s mind
If not, when
all is said, to drive away
The shadow
of his fellows from the skies,
(The
Comedian as the Letter C, Harmonium)
What word
have you, interpreters, of men
Who in the
tomb of heaven walk by night
The darkened
ghosts of our old comedy?
Do they
believe they range the gusty cold,
With
lanterns borne aloft to light the way,
Freemen of
death, about and still about
To find
whatever it is they seek?...
(Of Heaven
Considered as a Tomb, Harmonium)
Not less
because in purple I descended
The western
day through what you called
The
loneliest air, not less was I myself.
What was the
ointment sprinkled on my beard?
What were
the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?
What was the
sea whose tide swept through me there?
Out of my
mind the golden ointment rained,
And my ears
made the blowing hymns they heard.
I was myself
the compass of that sea:
I was the
world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or
felt came not but from myself;
And there I
found myself more truly and more strange.
(Tea at the
Palaz of Hoon, Harmonium, complete)
Why should
she give her bounty to the dead?
What is
divinity if it can come
Only in
silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she
not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent
fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm
or beauty of the earth,
Things to be
cherished like the thought of heaven?
(Sunday
Morning, Harmonium)
…she strews
the leaves
Of sure
obliteration on our paths,
(Sunday
Morning, Harmonium)
Is there no
change of death in paradise?
Does ripe
fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always
heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging,
yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers
like our own that seek for seas
They never
find…
(Sunday
Morning, Harmonium)
I measure
myself
Against a
tall tree.
I find that
I am much taller,
For I reach
right up to the sun,
With my eye;
And I reach
to the shore of the sea
With my ear.
Nevertheless,
I dislike
The way the
ants crawl
In and out
of my shadow.
(Six
Significant Landscapes, Harmonium)
The moon is
the mother of pathos and pity
/
When, at the
wearier end of November,
Her old
light moves along the branches,
Feebly,
slowly, depending upon them;
(Lunar
Paraphrase, Harmonium)
But I am, in
any case,
A most
inappropriate man
In a most
unpropitious place.
(Sailing
After Lunch, Ideas of Order)
Oh! Blessed
rage for order…
(The Idea of
Order at c West, Ideas of Order)
…synagogue
…That church
without bells.
(Winter
Bells, Ideas of Order)
It was the
custom
For his rage
against chaos
To abate on
the way to church,
(Winter
Bells, Ideas of Order)
An infinite
incantation of our selves
(Academic
Discourse at Havana, Ideas of Order)
A little
less returned for him each spring.
Music began
to fail him. Brahms, although
His dark
familiar, often walked apart.
(Anglais
Mort a Florence, Ideas of Order)
To nail his
thought across the door,
Its wings
spread wide to rain and snow,
(The Man
with the Blue Guitar, The Man with the Blue Guitar)
It is the
chord that falsifies.
…
The discord
merely magnifies.
(The Man
with the Blue Guitar, The Man with the Blue Guitar)
…Am I a man
that is dead
/
At a table
on which the food is cold?
Is my
thought a memory, not alive?
(The Man
with the Blue Guitar, The Man with the Blue Guitar)
Place honey
on the altars and die,
You lovers
that are bitter at heart.
(The Man
with the Blue Guitar, The Man with the Blue Guitar)
The
imperfect is our paradise.
(The Poems
of Our Climate, Parts of a World)
If he will
be heaven and death,
If, while he
lives, he hears himself
Sounded in
music, f the sun,
Stormer, is
the color of a self
As certainly
as night is the color
Of a self,
if, without sentiment,
He is what
he hears and sees and if,
Without
pathos, he feels what he hears
And sees, being nothing otherwise, he has not
To go to the Louvre to behold himself.
(Prelude to Objects, Parts of a World)
Birds that came like dirty water in waves
(Prelude to Objects, Parts of a World)
The web is woven and you have to wear it.
/
The winter is made and you have to bear it,
(The Dwarf, Parts of a World)
Where is it that you think, baffled
By the trash of life,
Through winter’s meditative light?
(The Bagatelles the Madrigals, Parts of a World)
The night should be warm and fluters’ fortune
Should play in the trees when morning comes.
(Girl in a Nightgown, Parts of a World)
If the stars that move together as one, disband,
Flying like insects…
(On an Old Horn, Parts of a World)
How often had he walked
Beneath summer and the sky
To receive her shadow into his mind…
Miserable that it was not she.
/
The sky is too blue, the earth too wide.
The thought of her takes her away.
The form of her in somethings else
Is not enough.
/
The reflection of her here, and then there,
Is another shadow, another evasion,
Another denial. If she is everywhere,
She is nowhere, to him.
(Bouquet of Belle Scavoir, Parts of a World)
…But one looks at the sea
As one improvises, on the piano.
(Variations on a Summer Day, Parts of a World)
The wind dissolving into birds
(Woman Looking at a Vase
of Flowers, Parts of a World)
Hoot, little owl within her, how
High blue became particular
In the leaf and bud and how the red,
Flicked into pieces, points of air,
Became—how the central, essential red
Escaped its large abstraction, became,
First, summer, then a lesser time,
Then the sides of peaches, of dusky pears.
(Woman Looking at a Vase of Flowers, Parts of a World)
The good is evil’s last invention. Thus
The maker of catastrophe invents the eye
And through the eye equates ten thousand deaths
With a single, well-tempered apricot…
(Extracts from Addresses to the Academy of Fine Ideas, Parts of
a World)
…Or is it the multitude of thoughts,
Like insects in the depth of the mind, that kill
The single thought? The multitudes of men
That kill the single man, starvation’s head,
One man, their bread and their remembered wine?
(Extracts from Addresses to the Academy of Fine Ideas, Parts of
a World)
…Ercole,
Of what do you lie thinking in your cavern?
To think it is to think the way to death…
(Extracts from Addresses to the Academy of Fine Ideas, Parts of
a World)
What more is there to love that I have loved?
…
But if there be something more to love, amen,
Amen to the feelings about familiar things,
…
Delivering the prisoner by his words,
So that the skeleton in the moonlight sings,
Sings of an heroic world beyond the cell
/
No, not believing, but to make the cell
A hero’s world in which he is the hero.
Man must become the hero of his world.
(Montrachet-le-Jardin, Parts of a World)
One of the sacraments between two breaths
(Montrachet-le-Jardin, Parts of a World)
So you’re home again, Redwood Roamer, and ready
To feast…Slice the mango, Naaman and dress it
/
With white wine, sugar and lime juice. Then bring it,
After we’ve drunk the Moselle, to the thickest shade
/
Of the garden. We must prepare to hear the Roamer’s
Story…
(Certain Phenomena of Sound, Transport to Summer)
The wind moves like a cripple among the leaves
And repeats words without meaning.
(The Motive for Metaphor, Transport to Summer)
The lies the misery, the coldest coil
That grips the centre, the actual bite, that life
Itself is like a poverty in the space of life,
So that the flapping of wind around me here
Is something in tatters that I cannot hold.
(So-and-So Reclining on Her Couch, Transport to Summer)
Tell X that speech is not dirty silence
Clarified. It is silence made still dirtier.
(The Creation of Sound, Transport to Summer)
His firm stanzas hang like hives in hell
Or what hell was, since now both heaven and hell
Are one, and here, O terra infidel.
/
The fault lies with an over-human god,
Who by sympathy has made himself a man
And is not to be distinguished, when we cry
/
Because we suffer, our oldest parent, peer
Of the populace of the heart, the reddest lord,
Who has gone before us in experience.
/
If only he would not pity us so much
Weaken our fate, relieve us woe both great
And small, a constant fellow of destiny,
/
A too, too human god, self-pity’s kin
And uncourageous genesis… It seems
As if the health of the world might be enough.
/
It seems as if the honey of common summer
Might be enough, as if the golden combs
Were part of a sustenance itself enough,
/
As if hell, so modified, had disappeared,
As if pain, no longer satanic mimicry,
Could be borne, as if we were sure to find our way.
(Esthetique du Mal, Transport to Summer)
It may be that one life is a punishment
For another, as the son’s life for the father’s.
(Esthetique du Mal, Transport to Summer)
If there must be a god in the house, must be,
Saying things in the rooms and on the stair,
/
Let him move as the sunlight moves on the floor,
Or moonlight, silently, …
(Esthetique du Mal, Transport to Summer)
The grotesque is not a visitation. It is
Not apparition but appearance…
(A Word with Jose Rodriguez-Feo, Transport to Summer)
The poem must resist the intelligence
Almost successfully…
(Man Carry Thing, Transport to Summer)
Through centuries he lived in poverty.
God only was his only elegance.
(The Good Man Has No Shape, Transport to Summer)
Of the limits of reality
Presents itself in Oley when the hay,
Baked through long days, is piled in mows. It is
A land too ripe for enigmas, too serene.
(Credences of Summer, Transport to Summer)
How clean the sun when seen in its idea,
Washed in the remotest cleanliness of a heaven
That has expelled us and our images…
(Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction, Transport to Summer)
…and yet so poisonous
/
Are the ravishments of truth, so fatal to
The truth itself,…
(Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction, Transport to Summer)
Being virile, it hears the calendar hymn.
(Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction, Transport to Summer)
…Perhaps
The truth depends on a walk around a lake,
/
A composing as the body tires, a stop
To see hepatica, a stop to watch
A definition growing certain and
/
A wait within that certainty, a rest
In the swags of pine-trees bordering the lake.
(Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction, Transport to Summer)
It is of him, ephebe, to make, to confect
The final elegance, not to console
Nor sanctify, but plainly to propound.
(Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction, Transport to Summer)
…like a photograph of fate
(Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction, Transport to Summer)
On her trip around the world, Nanzia Nunzio
Confronted Ozymandias. She went
Alone and like a vestal long-prepared.
/
I am the spouse. She took her necklace off
And laid it in the sand. As I am, I am
The spouse. She opened her stone-studded belt.
/
I am the spouse, divested of bright gold,
The spouse beyond emerald or amethyst,
Beyond the burning body that I bear.
/
I am the woman stripped more nakedly
Than nakedness, standing before an inflexible
Order, saying I am the contemplated spouse.
/
Speak to me that, which spoken, will array me
In its own only precious ornament.
Set on me the spirit’s diamond coronal.
/
Clothe me entire in the final filament,
So that I tremble with such love so known
And myself am precious for your perfecting.
/
Then Ozymandias said the spouse, the bride
Is never naked. A fictive covering
Weaves always glistening from the heart and mind.
(Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction, Transport to Summer)
What am I to believe? If the angel in his cloud,
Serenely gazing at the violent abyss,
Plucks on his strings to pluck abysmal glory,
/
Leaps downward through evening’s revelations, and
On his spredden wings, needs nothing but deep space,
Forgets the gold centre, the golden destiny.
/
Grows warm in the motionless motion of his flight,
Am I that imagine this angel less satisfied?
Are the wings his, the lapis-haunted air?
/
Is it he or is it I that experience this?
(Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction, Transport to Summer)
This is where the serpent lives. This is his nest,
These fields, these hills, these tinted distances,
And the pines above and along and beside the sea.
(The Auroras of Autumn, The Auroras of Autumn)
Farewell to an idea… A cabin stands,
Deserted, on a beach. It is white,
As by a custom or according to
/
An ancestral theme or as a consequence
Of an infinite course. The flowers against the wall
Are white, a little dried, a kind of mark
/
Reminding, trying to remind, of a white
That was different, something else, last year
Or before, not the white of an aging afternoon,
/
Whether fresher or duller, whether of winter cloud
Or of winter sky, from horizon to horizon.
The wind is blowing the sand across the floor.
/
Here, being visible is being white,
Is being of the solid of white, the accomplishment
Of an extremist in an exercise…
/
The seasons change. A cold wind chills the beach.
The long lines of it grow longer, emptier,
A darkness gathers though it does not fall
/
And the whiteness grows less vivid on the wall.
The man who is walking turns blankly on the sand.
He observes how north is always enlarging the change,
/
With its frigid brilliances, its blue-red sweeps
And gusts of great enkindlings, its polar green,
The color of ice and fire and solitude.
(The Auroras of Autumn, The Auroras of Autumn)
We were as Danes in Denmark all day long
And knew each other well, hale-hearted landsmen,
For whom the outlandish was another day
/
Of the week, queerer than Sunday. …
(The Auroras of Autumn, The Auroras of Autumn)
How mad would he have to be to say, “He beheld
An order and thereafter he belonged
To it”? He beheld the order of the northern sky.
/
But the beggar gazes on calamity
And thereafter he belongs to it, to bread
Hard found, and water tasting of misery.
/
For him cold’s glacial beauty is his fate.
Without understanding, he belongs to it
And the night, and midnight, and after, where it is.
(In a Bad Time, The Auroras of Autumn)
A source of pleasant outbursts…
(A Primitive Like an Orb, The Auroras of Autumn)
In all the solemn moments of/human history…poets rose/to sing the hymn
of victory or/the psalm of supplication…Cease, then, from being the astute
calligraphers of congealed / daydreams, the hunters of /cerebral
phosphorescences. / LETTER OF CELESTIN VI, POPE, / TO THE POETS/ P.C.C.
GIOVANNI PAPINI. (Reply to Papini, The Auroras of Autumn)
The day is great and strong—
But his father was strong, that lies now
In the poverty of dirt.
(World Without Peculiarity, The Auroras of Autumn)
The eye’s plain version is a thing apart,
The vulgate of experience…
(An Ordinary Evening in New Haven, The Auroras of Autumn)
The point of vision and desire are the same.
(An Ordinary Evening in New Haven, The Auroras of Autumn)
…It is as if
Men turning into things, as comedy,
Stood, dressed in antic symbols, to display
/
The truth about themselves, having lost, as things,
That power to conceal they had as men,
(An Ordinary Evening in New Haven, The Auroras of Autumn)
Of bird-nest arches and of rain-stained-vaults.
/
The sound drifts in. The buildings are remembered.
The life of the city never lets go, nor do you
Ever want it to. It is part of the life in your room.
Its domes are the architecture of your bed.
The bells keep on repeated solemn names
/
In choruses and choirs of choruses,
Unwilling that mercy should be a mystery
Of silence, that any solitude of sense
Should give you more than their peculiar chords
And reverberations clinging to whisper still.
/
It is a kind of total grandeur at the end,
With every visible thing enlarged and yet
No more than a bed, a chair and moving nuns,
The immensest theatre, the pillared porch,
The book and candle in your ambered room,
/
Total grandeur of a total edifice,
Chosen by an inquisitor of structures,
For himself. He stops upon this threshold,
As if the design of all his words takes form
And frame from thinking and is realized.
(To an Old Philosopher in Rome, The Rock)
Among the more irritating minor ideas
Of Mr. Homburg during his visits home
To Concord, at the edge of things, was this:
(Looking Across the Fields and Watching the Birds Fly, The Rock)
…Wanderer, this is the pre-history of February.
The life of the poem in the mind has not yet begun.
/
You were not born yet when the trees were crystal
Nor are you now, in this wakefulness inside a sleep.
(Long and Sluggish Lines, The Rock)
His place, as he sat and as he thought, was not
In anything that he constructed, so frail,
So barely lit, so shadowed over and naught,
/
As, for example, a world in which, like snow,
He became an inhabitant, obedient
To gallant notions of the part of cold.
/
It was here. This was the setting and the time
Of year. Here in his house and in his room,
In his chair, the most tranquil thought grew peaked
/
And the oldest and the warmest heart was cut
By gallant notions on the part of night—
Both late and alone, above the cricket’s chords,
/
Babbling, each one, the uniqueness of its sound.
There was no fury in transcendent forms.
But his actual candle blazed with artifice.
(A Quiet Normal Life, complete, The Rock)
It is an illusion that we were ever alive
Lived in the houses of mothers, arranged ourselves
By our own motions in a freedom of air.
(The Rock, The Rock)
posted by Raul de Saldanha at
7:26 AM
0 Comments
