Oh! Blessed rage for order, Pale Ramon... A Wallace Stevens wordlist from selected poems.

When you were Eve, its acrid juice was sweet,
Untasted, in its heavenly, orchard air.

It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.

Let the lamp affix its beam.

Alas!

This parable, in sense, amounts to this:
The honey of heaven may or may not come,
But that of earth both comes and goes at once.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Yet you persist with anecdotal bliss
To make believe a starry co naissance.

In the same way, you were happy in spring,
With the half colors of quarter-things,
The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds,
The single bird, the obscure moon--

The obscure moon lighting an obscure world
Of things that would never be quite expressed,
Where you yourself were not quite yourself,
And did not want nor have to be,

Desiring the exhilarations of changes:
The motive for metaphor, shrinking from
The weight of primary noon,
The A B C of being,

The ruddy temper, the hammer
Of r...

Like a dull scholar, I behold, in love,
An ancient aspect touching a new mind.

But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea.

The Motive for Metaphor
by

You like it under the trees in autumn,
Because everything is half dead.

When amorists grow bald, then amours shrink
Into the compass and curriculum
Of introspective exiles, lecturing.

I know no magic trees, no balmy boughs,
No silver-ruddy, gold-vermilion fruits.

Have all the barbers lived in vain
That not one curl in nature has survived?

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

Yet you persist with anecdotal bliss
To make believe a starry co naissance.

Suppose these couriers brought amid their train
A damsel heightened by eternal bloom.

Last night, we sat beside a pool of pink,
Clippered with lilies scudding the bright chromes,
Keen to the point of starlight, while a frog
Boomed from his very belly odious chords.

I know no magic trees, no balmy boughs,
No silver-ruddy, gold-vermilion fruits.

Where shall I find
Bravura adequate to this great hymn?

An inchling bristles in these pines,

Bristles, and points their Appalachian tangs,
And fears not portly Azcan nor his hoos.

Most venerable heart, the lustiest conceit
Is not too lusty for your broadening.

But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea.

And then
A deep up-pouring from some saltier well
Within me, bursts its watery syllable.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds
Bantams in Pine-Woods
by

Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan
Of tan with henna hackles, halt!

Meantime, centurions guffaw and beat
Their shrilling tankards on the table-boards.

It is a red bird that seeks out his choir
Among the choirs of wind and wet and wing.

It was part of the colossal sun,

Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away.

Last night, we sat beside a pool of pink,
Clippered with lilies scudding the bright chromes,
Keen to the point of starlight, while a frog
Boomed from his very belly odious chords.

That scrawny cry--It was
A chorister whose c preceded the choir.

XII.
A blue pigeon it is, that circles the blue sky,
On sidelong wing, around and round and round.

Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy cisterns hankering for hymns.

You know the mountainous coiffures of Bath.

It was part of the colossal sun,

Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away.

When amorists grow bald, then amours shrink
Into the compass and curriculum
Of introspective exiles, lecturing.

Most venerable heart, the lustiest conceit
Is not too lusty for your broadening.

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy cisterns hankering for hymns.

If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves;
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
However clear, it would have been deep air,
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone.

Suppose these couriers brought amid their train
A damsel heightened by eternal bloom.

Remember how the crickets came
Out of their mother grass, like little kin,
In the pale nights, when your first imagery
Found inklings of your bond to all that dust.

Shall I uncrumple this much-crumpled thing?

IX.
In verses wild with motion, full of din,
Loudened by cries, by clashes, quick and sure
As the deadly thought of men accomplishing
Their curious fates in war, come, celebrate
The faith of forty, ward of Cupido.

When amorists grow bald, then amours shrink
Into the compass and curriculum
Of introspective exiles, lecturing.

Suppose these couriers brought amid their train
A damsel heightened by eternal bloom.

Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds
Bantams in Pine-Woods
by

Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan
Of tan with henna hackles, halt!

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

IX.
In verses wild with motion, full of din,
Loudened by cries, by clashes, quick and sure
As the deadly thought of men accomplishing
Their curious fates in war, come, celebrate
The faith of forty, ward of Cupido.

Allow,
Therefore, that in the planetary scene
Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed,
Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade,
Proud of such novelties of the sublime,
Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk,
May, merely may, Madame, whip from themselves
A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres.

But in our amours amorists discern
Such fluctuations that their scrivening
Is breathless to attend each quirky turn.

Two golden gourds distended on our vines,
Into the autumn weather, splashed with frost,
Distorted by hale fatness, turned grotesque.

Like a rose rabbi, later, I pursued,
And still pursue, the origin and course
Of love, but until now I never knew
That fluttering things have so distinct a shade.

But note the unconscionable treachery of fate,
That makes us weep, laugh, grunt and groan, and shout
Doleful heroics, pinching gestures forth
From madness or delight, without regard
To that first, foremost law.

In the same way, you were happy in spring,
With the half colors of quarter-things,
The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds,
The single bird, the obscure moon--

The obscure moon lighting an obscure world
Of things that would never be quite expressed,
Where you yourself were not quite yourself,
And did not want nor have to be,

Desiring the exhilarations of changes:
The motive for metaphor, shrinking from
The weight of primary noon,
The A B C of being,

The ruddy temper, the hammer
Of r...

For me, the firefly's quick, electric stroke
Ticks tediously the time of one more year.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

VI.
If men at forty will be painting lakes
The ephemeral blues must merge for them in one,
The basic slate, the universal hue.

Thus, our bawdiness,
Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last,
Is equally converted into palms,
Squiggling like saxophones.

Suppose these couriers brought amid their train
A damsel heightened by eternal bloom.

But it excels in this, that as the fruit
Of love, it is a book too mad to read
Before one merely reads to pass the time.

In the same way, you were happy in spring,
With the half colors of quarter-things,
The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds,
The single bird, the obscure moon--

The obscure moon lighting an obscure world
Of things that would never be quite expressed,
Where you yourself were not quite yourself,
And did not want nor have to be,

Desiring the exhilarations of changes:
The motive for metaphor, shrinking from
The weight of primary noon,
The A B C of being,

The ruddy temper, the hamm...

When amorists grow bald, then amours shrink
Into the compass and curriculum
Of introspective exiles, lecturing.

"Gray Room" (1917)

by

Although you sit in a room that is gray,
Except for the silver
Of the straw-paper,
And pick
At your pale white gown;
Or lift one of the green beads
Of your necklace,
To let it fall;
Or gaze at your green fan
Printed with the red branches of a red willow;
Or, with one finger,
Move the leaf in the bowl--
The leaf that has fallen from the branches of the forsythia
Beside you...

X.
The fops of fancy in their poems leave
Memorabilia of the mystic spouts,
Spontaneously watering their gritty soils.

In the same way, you were happy in spring,
With the half colors of quarter-things,
The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds,
The single bird, the obscure moon--

The obscure moon lighting an obscure world
Of things that would never be quite expressed,
Where you yourself were not quite yourself,
And did not want nor have to be,

Desiring the exhilarations of changes:
The motive for metaphor, shrinking from
The weight of primary noon,
The A B C of being,

The ruddy temper, the hammer
Of r...

The High-Toned Old Christian Woman

Poetry is the supreme fiction, Madame.

But fictive things
Wink as they will.

There are filaments of your eyes
On the surface of the water
And in the edges of the snow.

Let be be finale of seem.

In the same way, you were happy in spring,
With the half colors of quarter-things,
The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds,
The single bird, the obscure moon--

The obscure moon lighting an obscure world
Of things that would never be quite expressed,
Where you yourself were not quite yourself,
And did not want nor have to be,

Desiring the exhilarations of changes:
The motive for metaphor, shrinking from
The weight of primary noon,
The A B C of being,

The ruddy temper, the hammer
Of r...

The webs of your eyes
Are fastened
To the flesh and bones of you
As to rafters or grass.

But in our amours amorists discern
Such fluctuations that their scrivening
Is breathless to attend each quirky turn.

The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

The sea of spuming thought foists up again
The radiant bubble that she was.

X.
The fops of fancy in their poems leave
Memorabilia of the mystic spouts,
Spontaneously watering their gritty soils.

But note the unconscionable treachery of fate,
That makes us weep, laugh, grunt and groan, and shout
Doleful heroics, pinching gestures forth
From madness or delight, without regard
To that first, foremost law.

I am a man of fortune greeting heirs;
For it has come that thus I greet the spring.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds
Bantams in Pine-Woods
by

Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan
Of tan with henna hackles, halt!

It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.

"Gray Room" (1917)

by

Although you sit in a room that is gray,
Except for the silver
Of the straw-paper,
And pick
At your pale white gown;
Or lift one of the green beads
Of your necklace,
To let it fall;
Or gaze at your green fan
Printed with the red branches of a red willow;
Or, with one finger,
Move the leaf in the bowl--
The leaf that has fallen from the branches of the forsythia
Beside you...

In the same way, you were happy in spring,
With the half colors of quarter-things,
The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds,
The single bird, the obscure moon--

The obscure moon lighting an obscure world
Of things that would never be quite expressed,
Where you yourself were not quite yourself,
And did not want nor have to be,

Desiring the exhilarations of changes:
The motive for metaphor, shrinking from
The weight of primary noon,
The A B C of being,

The ruddy temper, the hammer
Of r...

The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.

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...

Two golden gourds distended on our vines,
Into the autumn weather, splashed with frost,
Distorted by hale fatness, turned grotesque.

It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.

Two golden gourds distended on our vines,
Into the autumn weather, splashed with frost,
Distorted by hale fatness, turned grotesque.

Meantime, centurions guffaw and beat
Their shrilling tankards on the table-boards.

Two golden gourds distended on our vines,
Into the autumn weather, splashed with frost,
Distorted by hale fatness, turned grotesque.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds
Bantams in Pine-Woods
by

Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan
Of tan with henna hackles, halt!

Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy cisterns hankering for hymns.

Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven.

If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves;
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
However clear, it would have been deep air,
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone.

I am a man of fortune greeting heirs;
For it has come that thus I greet the spring.

I shall not play the flat historic scale.

But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea.

VI.
If men at forty will be painting lakes
The ephemeral blues must merge for them in one,
The basic slate, the universal hue.

Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy cisterns hankering for hymns.

Remember how the crickets came
Out of their mother grass, like little kin,
In the pale nights, when your first imagery
Found inklings of your bond to all that dust.

IV.
This luscious and impeccable fruit of life
Falls, it appears, of its own weight to earth.

Have all the barbers lived in vain
That not one curl in nature has survived?

Thus, our bawdiness,
Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last,
Is equally converted into palms,
Squiggling like saxophones.

The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

Remember how the crickets came
Out of their mother grass, like little kin,
In the pale nights, when your first imagery
Found inklings of your bond to all that dust.

The measure of the intensity of love
Is measure, also, of the verve of earth.

In the same way, you were happy in spring,
With the half colors of quarter-things,
The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds,
The single bird, the obscure moon--

The obscure moon lighting an obscure world
Of things that would never be quite expressed,
Where you yourself were not quite yourself,
And did not want nor have to be,

Desiring the exhilarations of changes:
The motive for metaphor, shrinking from
The weight of primary noon,
The A B C of being,

The ruddy temper, the hammer
Of r...

When amorists grow bald, then amours shrink
Into the compass and curriculum
Of introspective exiles, lecturing.

Allow,
Therefore, that in the planetary scene
Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed,
Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade,
Proud of such novelties of the sublime,
Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk,
May, merely may, Madame, whip from themselves
A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres.

Last night, we sat beside a pool of pink,
Clippered with lilies scudding the bright chromes,
Keen to the point of starlight, while a frog
Boomed from his very belly odious chords.

Remember how the crickets came
Out of their mother grass, like little kin,
In the pale nights, when your first imagery
Found inklings of your bond to all that dust.

Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.

When amorists grow bald, then amours shrink
Into the compass and curriculum
Of introspective exiles, lecturing.

IV.
This luscious and impeccable fruit of life
Falls, it appears, of its own weight to earth.

The High-Toned Old Christian Woman

Poetry is the supreme fiction, Madame.

She measured to the hour its solitude.

In the same way, you were happy in spring,
With the half colors of quarter-things,
The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds,
The single bird, the obscure moon--

The obscure moon lighting an obscure world
Of things that would never be quite expressed,
Where you yourself were not quite yourself,
And did not want nor have to be,

Desiring the exhilarations of changes:
The motive for metaphor, shrinking from
The weight of primary noon,
The A B C of being,

The ruddy temper, the hamm...

X.
The fops of fancy in their poems leave
Memorabilia of the mystic spouts,
Spontaneously watering their gritty soils.

VI.
If men at forty will be painting lakes
The ephemeral blues must merge for them in one,
The basic slate, the universal hue.

No spring can follow past meridian.

The Motive for Metaphor
by

You like it under the trees in autumn,
Because everything is half dead.

The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

Every day, I found
Man proved a gobbet in my mincing world.

And so I mocked her in magnificent measure.

Le Monocle de Mon Oncle
by

"Mother of heaven, Regina of the clouds,
O scepter of the sun, crown of the moon,
There is not nothing, no, no, never nothing,
Like the clashed edges of two words that kill."

Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven.

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

X.
The fops of fancy in their poems leave
Memorabilia of the mystic spouts,
Spontaneously watering their gritty soils.

Have all the barbers lived in vain
That not one curl in nature has survived?

Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven.

Allow,
Therefore, that in the planetary scene
Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed,
Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade,
Proud of such novelties of the sublime,
Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk,
May, merely may, Madame, whip from themselves
A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres.

In the same way, you were happy in spring,
With the half colors of quarter-things,
The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds,
The single bird, the obscure moon--

The obscure moon lighting an obscure world
Of things that would never be quite expressed,
Where you yourself were not quite yourself,
And did not want nor have to be,

Desiring the exhilarations of changes:
The motive for metaphor, shrinking from
The weight of primary noon,
The A B C of being,

The ruddy temper, the hamm...

Last night, we sat beside a pool of pink,
Clippered with lilies scudding the bright chromes,
Keen to the point of starlight, while a frog
Boomed from his very belly odious chords.

Meantime, centurions guffaw and beat
Their shrilling tankards on the table-boards.

But take
The opposing law and make a peristyle,
And from the peristyle project a masque
Beyond the planets.

When you were Eve, its acrid juice was sweet,
Untasted, in its heavenly, orchard air.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds
Bantams in Pine-Woods
by

Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan
Of tan with henna hackles, halt!

The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.

I quiz all sounds, all thoughts, all everything
For the music and manner of the paladins
To make oblation fit.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds
Bantams in Pine-Woods
by

Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan
Of tan with henna hackles, halt!

Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy cisterns hankering for hymns.

The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow...

This parable, in sense, amounts to this:
The honey of heaven may or may not come,
But that of earth both comes and goes at once.

It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.

XII.
A blue pigeon it is, that circles the blue sky,
On sidelong wing, around and round and round.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds
Bantams in Pine-Woods
by

Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan
Of tan with henna hackles, halt!

X.
The fops of fancy in their poems leave
Memorabilia of the mystic spouts,
Spontaneously watering their gritty soils.

You ten-foot poet among inchlings.

The High-Toned Old Christian Woman

Poetry is the supreme fiction, Madame.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

III.
Is it for nothing, then, that old Chinese
Sat titivating by their mountain pools
Or in the Yangtze studied out their beards?

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds
Bantams in Pine-Woods
by

Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan
Of tan with henna hackles, halt!

An inchling bristles in these pines,

Bristles, and points their Appalachian tangs,
And fears not portly Azcan nor his hoos.

But take
The opposing law and make a peristyle,
And from the peristyle project a masque
Beyond the planets.

If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.

Allow,
Therefore, that in the planetary scene
Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed,
Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade,
Proud of such novelties of the sublime,
Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk,
May, merely may, Madame, whip from themselves
A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres.

Like a rose rabbi, later, I pursued,
And still pursue, the origin and course
Of love, but until now I never knew
That fluttering things have so distinct a shade.

But in our amours amorists discern
Such fluctuations that their scrivening
Is breathless to attend each quirky turn.

Like a dark rabbi, I
Observed, when young, the nature of mankind,
In lordly study.

It was like
A new knowledge of reality.

But note the unconscionable treachery of fate,
That makes us weep, laugh, grunt and groan, and shout
Doleful heroics, pinching gestures forth
From madness or delight, without regard
To that first, foremost law.

An apple serves as well as any skull
To be the book in which to read a round,
And is as excellent, in that it is composed
Of what, like skulls, comes rotting back to ground.

An apple serves as well as any skull
To be the book in which to read a round,
And is as excellent, in that it is composed
Of what, like skulls, comes rotting back to ground.

In the same way, you were happy in spring,
With the half colors of quarter-things,
The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds,
The single bird, the obscure moon--

The obscure moon lighting an obscure world
Of things that would never be quite expressed,
Where you yourself were not quite yourself,
And did not want nor have to be,

Desiring the exhilarations of changes:
The motive for metaphor, shrinking from
The weight of primary noon,
The A B C of being,

The ruddy temper, the hamm...

I shall not play the flat historic scale.

Le Monocle de Mon Oncle
by

"Mother of heaven, Regina of the clouds,
O scepter of the sun, crown of the moon,
There is not nothing, no, no, never nothing,
Like the clashed edges of two words that kill."

The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.

At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.

Last night, we sat beside a pool of pink,
Clippered with lilies scudding the bright chromes,
Keen to the point of starlight, while a frog
Boomed from his very belly odious chords.

Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.

But, after all, I know a tree that bears
A semblance to the thing I have in mind.

An apple serves as well as any skull
To be the book in which to read a round,
And is as excellent, in that it is composed
Of what, like skulls, comes rotting back to ground.

Like a rose rabbi, later, I pursued,
And still pursue, the origin and course
Of love, but until now I never knew
That fluttering things have so distinct a shade.

But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea.

In the same way, you were happy in spring,
With the half colors of quarter-things,
The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds,
The single bird, the obscure moon--

The obscure moon lighting an obscure world
Of things that would never be quite expressed,
Where you yourself were not quite yourself,
And did not want nor have to be,

Desiring the exhilarations of changes:
The motive for metaphor, shrinking from
The weight of primary noon,
The A B C of being,

The ruddy temper, the hammer
Of r...

Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.

VI.
If men at forty will be painting lakes
The ephemeral blues must merge for them in one,
The basic slate, the universal hue.

X.
The fops of fancy in their poems leave
Memorabilia of the mystic spouts,
Spontaneously watering their gritty soils.

She measured to the hour its solitude.

In the same way, you were happy in spring,
With the half colors of quarter-things,
The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds,
The single bird, the obscure moon--

The obscure moon lighting an obscure world
Of things that would never be quite expressed,
Where you yourself were not quite yourself,
And did not want nor have to be,

Desiring the exhilarations of changes:
The motive for metaphor, shrinking from
The weight of primary noon,
The A B C of being,

The ruddy temper, the hammer
Of r...

Allow,
Therefore, that in the planetary scene
Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed,
Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade,
Proud of such novelties of the sublime,
Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk,
May, merely may, Madame, whip from themselves
A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres.

Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.

X.
The fops of fancy in their poems leave
Memorabilia of the mystic spouts,
Spontaneously watering their gritty soils.

It crawls under your eyelids
And spreads its webs there--
Its two webs.

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...

We hang like warty squashes, streaked and rayed,
The laughing sky will see the two of us
Washed into rinds by rotting winter winds.

It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.

Allow,
Therefore, that in the planetary scene
Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed,
Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade,
Proud of such novelties of the sublime,
Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk,
May, merely may, Madame, whip from themselves
A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres.

There is a substance in us that prevails.

The High-Toned Old Christian Woman

Poetry is the supreme fiction, Madame.

There are filaments of your eyes
On the surface of the water
And in the edges of the snow.

It was part of the colossal sun,

Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away.

Have all the barbers lived in vain
That not one curl in nature has survived?

And then
A deep up-pouring from some saltier well
Within me, bursts its watery syllable.

An inchling bristles in these pines,

Bristles, and points their Appalachian tangs,
And fears not portly Azcan nor his hoos.

Allow,
Therefore, that in the planetary scene
Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed,
Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade,
Proud of such novelties of the sublime,
Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk,
May, merely may, Madame, whip from themselves
A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres.

Meantime, centurions guffaw and beat
Their shrilling tankards on the table-boards.

Tattoo

The light is like a spider.

In the same way, you were happy in spring,
With the half colors of quarter-things,
The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds,
The single bird, the obscure moon--

The obscure moon lighting an obscure world
Of things that would never be quite expressed,
Where you yourself were not quite yourself,
And did not want nor have to be,

Desiring the exhilarations of changes:
The motive for metaphor, shrinking from
The weight of primary noon,
The A B C of being,

The ruddy temper, the hamm...

But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea.

It is a theme for Hyacinth alone.

For me, the firefly's quick, electric stroke
Ticks tediously the time of one more year.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

It stands gigantic, with a certain tip
To which all birds come sometime in their time.

III.
Is it for nothing, then, that old Chinese
Sat titivating by their mountain pools
Or in the Yangtze studied out their beards?

A torrent will fall from him when he finds.

The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.

But note the unconscionable treachery of fate,
That makes us weep, laugh, grunt and groan, and shout
Doleful heroics, pinching gestures forth
From madness or delight, without regard
To that first, foremost law.

This trivial trope reveals a way of truth.

This trivial trope reveals a way of truth.

But note the unconscionable treachery of fate,
That makes us weep, laugh, grunt and groan, and shout
Doleful heroics, pinching gestures forth
From madness or delight, without regard
To that first, foremost law.

Damned universal cock, as if the sun
Was blackamoor to bear your blazing tail.

The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she heard,
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.

Have all the barbers lived in vain
That not one curl in nature has survived?

It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.

It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep's faded papier-mâché...

Most venerable heart, the lustiest conceit
Is not too lusty for your broadening.

It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep's faded papier-mâché...

The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

I know no magic trees, no balmy boughs,
No silver-ruddy, gold-vermilion fruits.

IX.
In verses wild with motion, full of din,
Loudened by cries, by clashes, quick and sure
As the deadly thought of men accomplishing
Their curious fates in war, come, celebrate
The faith of forty, ward of Cupido.

The measure of the intensity of love
Is measure, also, of the verve of earth.

In the same way, you were happy in spring,
With the half colors of quarter-things,
The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds,
The single bird, the obscure moon--

The obscure moon lighting an obscure world
Of things that would never be quite expressed,
Where you yourself were not quite yourself,
And did not want nor have to be,

Desiring the exhilarations of changes:
The motive for metaphor, shrinking from
The weight of primary noon,
The A B C of being,

The ruddy temper, the hammer
Of r...

IX.
In verses wild with motion, full of din,
Loudened by cries, by clashes, quick and sure
As the deadly thought of men accomplishing
Their curious fates in war, come, celebrate
The faith of forty, ward of Cupido.

Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.

The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

"Gray Room" (1917)

by

Although you sit in a room that is gray,
Except for the silver
Of the straw-paper,
And pick
At your pale white gown;
Or lift one of the green beads
Of your necklace,
To let it fall;
Or gaze at your green fan
Printed with the red branches of a red willow;
Or, with one finger,
Move the leaf in the bowl--
The leaf that has fallen from the branches of the forsythia
Beside you...

This will make widows wince.

I am a yeoman, as such fellows go.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.