Wallace Stevens

“Mother of heaven, regina of the clouds,
O sceptre 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 old brown hen and the old blue sky,
Between the two we live and die—The broken cartwheel on the hill
As if, in the presence of the sea,
We dried our nets and mended

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 house was quiet and the world was calm
The reader became the book; and summer
Was like the conscious being of the book
The house was quiet and the world was calm

Day creeps down
The moon is creeping up
The sun is a corbeil of flowers the moon Blanche Places there, a bouquet
Ho-ho

After the final no there comes a
And on that yes the future world depends
No was the night
Yes is this present sun

An old man
In the shadow of a pine
In China
He sees larkspur,