Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself

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

He knew that he heard it,
A bird's cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.

The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow...
It would have been outside.

It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep's faded papier-mache...
The sun was coming from the outside.

That scrawny cry--It was
A chorister whose c preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,

Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.


-- Wallace Stevens

2 comments:

Agincourtdb said...

I always wanted to set "The Emperor of Ice Cream" to music (I'm a composer). Never got around to it.

AQ: said...

This reminds me of Names-Place Place-Names in Within A Budding Grove X Also, I really should incorporate "panache" into my daily vocab...