Not Ideas About The Thing But The Thing Itself

Not Ideas About The Thing But The Thing Itself by Wallace Stevens

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-mache... 
The sun was coming from the 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. 

Form: Free verse

♡Like0

Share Comments