A Poem by Wallace Stevens
It is my hope that every month or so, I will post1 a poem I admire.
This one is by Wallace Stevens, and it has been a consolation to me at different moments in my life.
Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour
Light the first light of evening
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.
This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:
Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.
Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.
Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one…
How high that highest candle lights the dark.
Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.
1 I have done this without permission, and I apologize to his estate. If the estate objects, I’d be happy to remove it from the site. My original thinking about the blog was that if anyone had gone through the trouble of looking at the site and stumbled across this work, perhaps he or she might like this, too. Perhaps, dear reader, you would consider getting a copy of it at your favorite bookshop. The edition I like is: Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose (Library of America).
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