Wallace Stevens

Poetry

 

 

Domination of Black

 

At night, by the fire,

The colors of the bushes

And of the fallen leaves,

Repeating themselves,

Turned in the room,

Like the leaves themselves

Turning in the wind.

Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks

Came striding.

And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

 

The colors of their tails

Were like the leaves themselves

Turning in the wind,

In the twilight wind.

They swept over the room,

Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks

Down to the ground.

I heard them cry -- the peacocks.

Was it a cry against the twilight

Or against the leaves themselves

Turning in the wind,

Turning as the flames

Turned in the fire,

Turning as the tails of the peacocks

Turned in the loud fire,

Loud as the hemlocks

Full of the cry of the peacocks?

Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?

 

Out of the window,

I saw how the planets gathered

Like the leaves themselves

Turning in the wind.

I saw how the night came,

Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks

I felt afraid.

And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

 

 

 

The Emperor of Ice-cream

 

Call the roller of big cigars,

The muscular one, and bid him whip

In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

Let the wenches dawdle in such dress

As they are used to wear, and let the boys

Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.

Let be be finale of seem.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

 

Take from the dresser of deal.

Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet

On which she embroidered fantails once

And spread it so as to cover her face.

If her horny feet protrude, they come

To show how cold she is, and dumb.

Let the lamp affix its beam.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

 

 

 

A Rabbit As King Of The Ghosts

 

The difficulty to think at the end of day,

When the shapeless shadow covers the sun

And nothing is left except light on your fur—

 

There was the cat slopping its milk all day,

Fat cat, red tongue, green mind, white milk

And August the most peaceful month.

 

To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time,

Without that monument of cat,

The cat forgotten in the moon;

 

And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light,

In which everything is meant for you

And nothing need be explained;

 

Then there is nothing to think of. It comes of itself;

And east rushes west and west rushes down,

No matter. The grass is full

 

And full of yourself. The trees around are for you,

The whole of the wideness of night is for you,

A self that touches all edges,

 

You become a self that fills the four corners of night.

The red cat hides away in the fur-light

And there you are humped high, humped up,

 

You are humped higher and higher, black as stone—

You sit with your head like a carving in space

And the little green cat is a bug in the grass.

 

 

 

Six Significant Landscapes

 

I

 

An old man sits

In the shadow of a pine tree

In China.

He sees larkspur,

Blue and white,

At the edge of the shadow,

Move in the wind.

His beard moves in the wind.

The pine tree moves in the wind.

Thus water flows

Over weeds.

 

II

 

The night is of the colour

Of a woman's arm:

Night, the female,

Obscure,

Fragrant and supple,

Conceals herself.

A pool shines,

Like a bracelet

Shaken in a dance.

 

III

 

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 ants crawl

In and out of my shadow.

 

IV

 

When my dream was near the moon,

The white folds of its gown

Filled with yellow light.

The soles of its feet

Grew red.

Its hair filled

With certain blue crystallizations

From stars,

Not far off.

 

V

 

Not all the knives of the lamp-posts,

Nor the chisels of the long streets,

Nor the mallets of the domes

And high towers,

Can carve

What one star can carve,

Shining through the grape-leaves.

 

VI

 

Rationalists, wearing square hats,

Think, in square rooms,

Looking at the floor,

Looking at the ceiling.

They confine themselves

To right-angled triangles.

If they tried rhomboids,

Cones, waving lines, ellipses --

As, for example, the ellipse of the half-moon --

Rationalists would wear sombreros.

 

 

 

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

 

I

 

Among twenty snowy mountains,

The only moving thing

Was the eye of the black bird.

 

II

 

I was of three minds,

Like a tree

In which there are three blackbirds.

 

III

 

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.

It was a small part of the pantomime.

 

IV

 

A man and a woman

Are one.

A man and a woman and a blackbird

Are one.

 

V

 

I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of inflections

Or the beauty of innuendoes,

The blackbird whistling

Or just after.

 

VI

 

Icicles filled the long window

With barbaric glass.

The shadow of the blackbird

Crossed it, to and fro.

The mood

Traced in the shadow

An indecipherable cause.

 

VII

 

O thin men of Haddam,

Why do you imagine golden birds?

Do you not see how the blackbird

Walks around the feet

Of the women about you?

 

VIII

 

I know noble accents

And lucid, inescapable rhythms;

But I know, too,

That the blackbird is involved

In what I know.

 

IX

 

When the blackbird flew out of sight,

It marked the edge

Of one of many circles.

 

X

 

At the sight of blackbirds

Flying in a green light,

Even the bawds of euphony

Would cry out sharply.

 

XI

 

He rode over Connecticut

In a glass coach.

Once, a fear pierced him,

In that he mistook

The shadow of his equipage

For blackbirds.

 

XII

 

The river is moving.

The blackbird must be flying.

 

XIII

 

It was evening all afternoon.

It was snowing

And it was going to snow.

The blackbird sat

In the cedar-limbs.