Thursday, May 25, 2017

A Poem by Wallace Stevens

We had a big rain shower and now, just as twilight falls, it's over and the grounds here are so green and serene.

This is a much more calm post than my previous one.  I am praying for that whole situation.

Have I ever said how much I love the poetry of Wallace Stevens?

I keep coming across poems of his that fill me with admiration and wonder.

The other day I was looking for a poem that contained the word  interior, and this one appeared:








Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour

 

Wallace Stevens, 1879 - 1955

 

Light the first light of evening, as in a room

In which we rest and, for small reason, think

The world imagined is the ultimate good.

 

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.

It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,

Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

 

Within a single thing, a single shawl

Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,

A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

 

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.

We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,

A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

 

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.

We say God and the imagination are one...

How high that highest candle lights the dark.

 

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,

We make a dwelling in the evening air,

In which being there together is enough.
 
 
 
 

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