Poems by Wallace Stevens | Poetree

All Poems Original Poems Translations

« ‹ 1 2 3 4 5 › »

Metaphors of a Magnifico

Metaphors of a Magnifico

Twenty men crossing a bridge,

Into a village,

Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges,

Into twenty villages,

Or one man

Crossing a single bridge into a village.

This is old song

That will not declare itself . . .

15

0

Wallace Stevens

Six Significant Landscapes

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.

9

0

Wallace Stevens

Tattoo

Tattoo

The light is like a spider.

It crawls over the water.

It crawls over the edges of the snow.

It crawls under your eyelids

And spreads its webs there—

Its two webs.

The webs of your eyes

Are fastened

5

0

Wallace Stevens

Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself

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…

15

0

Wallace Stevens

The House Was Quiet And The World Was Calm

The House Was Quiet And The World Was Calm

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,

Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much to be

The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

9

0

Wallace Stevens

Domination Of Black

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

19

0

Wallace Stevens

Gray Room

Gray Room

Although you sit in a room that is gray,

Except for the silver

Of the straw-paper,

And pick

At your pale white gown;

Or lift one of the green beads

Of your necklace,

To let it fall;

8

0

Wallace Stevens

Peter Quince at the Clavier

Peter Quince at the Clavier

I

Just as my fingers on these keys

Make music, so the self-same sounds

On my spirit make a music, too.

Music is feeling, then, not sound;

And thus it is that what I feel,

Here in this room, desiring you,

Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,

14

0

Wallace Stevens

The Idea of Order at Key West

The Idea of Order at Key West

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.

The water never formed to mind or voice,

Like a body wholly body, fluttering

Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion

Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,

That was not ours although we understood,

Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

The sea was not a mask. No more was she.

19

0

Wallace Stevens

The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad

The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad

The time of year has grown indifferent.

Mildew of summer and the deepening snow

Are both alike in the routine I know:

I am too dumbly in my being pent.

The wind attendant on the solstices

Blows on the shutters of the metropoles,

Stirring no poet in his sleep, and tolls

The grand ideas of the villages.

19

0

Wallace Stevens

The Man On The Dump

The Man On The Dump

Day creeps down. The moon is creeping up.

The sun is a corbeil of flowers the moon Blanche

Places there, a bouquet. Ho-ho ... The dump is full

Of images. Days pass like papers from a press.

The bouquets come here in the papers. So the sun,

And so the moon, both come, and the janitor’s poems

Of every day, the wrapper on the can of pears,

The cat in the paper-bag, the corset, the box

28

0

Wallace Stevens

The Death of a Soldier

The Death of a Soldier

Life contracts and death is expected,

As in season of autumn.

The soldier falls.

He does not become a three-days personage.

Imposing his separation,

Calling for pomp.

Death is absolute and without memorial,

As in a season of autumn,

25

0

Wallace Stevens