Quote #101

The clouds preceded us. There was a muddy centre before we breathed. There was a myth before the myth began, Venerable and articulate and complete. From this the poem springs: that we live in a place That is not our own and, much more, not ourselves And hard it is in spire of blazoned days.

More from Wallace Stevens

  1. The first idea was not our own. Adam In Eden was the father of Descartes And eve made air the mirror of herself, Of her sons and of her dau…
  2. We are the mimics. Clouds are pedagogues.
  3. Life's nonsense pierces us with strange relation.
  4. Abysmal instruments make sounds like pips Of the sweeping meanings that we add to them.
  5. The poem, through candor, brings back a power again That gives a candid kind to everything.
  6. Yet voluble of dumb violence. You look Across the roofs as sigil and as ward And in your centre mark them and are cowed . . .
  7. The poem refreshes life so that we share, For a moment, the first idea . . . It satisfies Belief in an immaculate beginning And sends us, w…
  8. Not to be realized because not to Be seen, not to be loved nor hated because Not to be realized.

All Wallace Stevens quotes