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Purple-ground baluster and cover: Unknown potter, German, c. 1730, porcelain, height 40 cm (private collection)
Not less because in purple I descended
The western day through what you called
The loneliest air, not less was I myself.
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?
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:
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.
Wallace Stevens: Tea at the Palaz of Hoon, from Harmonium, 1921
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.
Wallace Stevens: Tea at the Palaz of Hoon, from Harmonium, 1921
1 comment:
Right on. My favorite lines are:
"What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?" -- the precision of "beside"
"Out of my mind the golden ointment rained" -- the mind as a physical place (cf. Lennon's "There's A Place")
"And there I found myself more truly and more strange." -- Rockin' the zeugma!
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