Contrary Theses II
One chemical afternoon in mid-autumn,
When the grand mechanics of earth and sky were near;
Even the leaves of the locust were yellow then,
He walked with his year-old boy on his shoulder.
The sun shone and the dog barked and the baby slept.
The leaves, even of the locust, the green locust.
He wanted and looked for a final refuge,
From the bombastic intimations of winter And the martyrs a la mode.
He walked toward An abstract, of which the sun, the dog, the boy Were contours.
Cold was chilling the wide-moving swans.
The leaves were falling like notes from a piano.
The abstract was suddenly there and gone again.
The negroes were playing football in the park.
The abstract that he saw, like the locust-leaves, plainly:
The premiss from which all things were conclusions,
The noble,
Alexandrine verve.
The flies And the bees still sought the chrysanthemums’ odor.
Wallace Stevens
Other author posts
Two Figures in Dense Violet Light
I had as lief be embraced by the portier of the As to get no more from the Than your moist hand Be the voice of the night and Florida in my ear
To The One Of Fictive Music
Sister and mother and diviner love, And of the sisterhood of the living Most near, most clear, and of the clearest bloom, And of the fragrant mothers the most
The Idea of Order at Key West
She sang beyond the genius of the sea The water never formed to mind or voice, Like a body wholly body, Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic
The Plot Against the Giant
First When this yokel comes maundering, Whetting his hacker, I shall run before him,
