Wallace Stevens

Just one exists and I am time,
the whole of time.
I am the whole of light.

(just one exists and I am time

I am between two infinite states
on the mid-line dividing,
between the infinite that waits

There is not nothing, no, no, never nothing,

Like the clashed edges of two words that kill.”

And so I mocked her in magnificent measure.
Or was it that I mocked myself alone?

wish that I might be a thinking stone.

INVECTIVE AGAINST SWANS

The soul, O ganders, flies beyond the parks

And far beyond the discords of the wind.

A bronze rain from the sun descending marks

The death of summer, which that time endures

Like one who scrawls a listless testament

Of golden quirks and Paphian caricatures,

Bequeathing your white feathers to the moon

And giving your bland motions to the air.

Behold, already on the long parades

The crows anoint the statues with their dirt.

And the soul, O ganders, being lonely, flies

Beyond your chilly chariots, to the skies.