Wednesday, August 23, 2017

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-mâché . . .

The sun was coming from 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.




BY WALLACE STEVENS

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