Herring-Hawker's Cry

As You Leave the Room

You speak. You say: Today’s character is not
A skeleton out of its cabinet. Nor am I.

That poem about the pineapple, the one
About the mind as never satisfied,

The one about the credible hero, the one
About summer, are not what skeletons think about.

I wonder, have I lived a skeleton’s life,
As a disbeliever in reality,

A countryman of all the bones in the world?
Now, here, the snow I had forgotten becomes

Part of a major reality, part of
An appreciation of a reality

And thus an elevation, as if I left
With something I could touch, touch every way.

And yet nothing has been changed except what is
Unreal, as if nothing had been changed at all.

— Wallace Stevens, from Opus Posthumous, poem dated 1947-1955? (via msodradek)

Posted February 23, 2010 at 12:15pm || home

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This is mainly a commonplace book for me. Just passing the time, waiting for Godot, really. We'll see where it goes.