Tuesday, December 14, 2021

Wallace Stevens

 

Photograph of Wallace Stevens twirling a cane, circa 1922, Wallace Stevens papers. Unknown photographer. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.


TEA AT THE PALAZ OF HOON


Not less because in purple I descended
The western day through what you called
The loneliest air, not less was I myself.

What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard?
What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?
What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?

Out of my mind the golden ointment rained,
And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard.
I was myself the compass of that sea:

I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.

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