Wallace Stevens Quotes on Memory
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A diary is more or less the work of a man of clay whose hands are clumsy and in whose eyes there is no light.
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Upon the bank, she stood In the cool Of spent emotions. She felt, among the leaves, The dew Of old devotions.
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Beauty is momentary in the mind - The fitful tracing of a portal; But in the flesh it is immortal. The body dies; the body's beauty lives. So evenings die, in their green going, A wave, interminably flowing. So gardens die, their meek breath scenting The cowl of winter, done repenting. So maidens die, to the auroral Celebration of a maiden's choral.
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Susanna's music touched the bawdy strings Of those white elders; but, escaping, Left only Death's ironic scraping. Now, in its immortality, it plays On the clear viol of her memory, And makes a constant sacrament of praise.
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Things as they are have been destroyed. Have I? Am I a man that is dead At a table on which the food is cold? Is my thought a memory, not alive? Is the spot on the floor, there, wine or blood And whichever it may be, is it mine?
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Should there be a question of returning or Of death in memory's dream? Is spring a sleep? This warmth is for lovers at last accomplishing Their love, this beginning, not resuming, this Booming and booming of the new-come bee.
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Of these beginnings, gay and green, propose The suitable amours. Time will write them down.
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It was enough for her that she remembered.
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Home from Guatemala, back at the Waldorf. This arrival in the wild country of the soul, All approaches gone, being completely there, Where the wild poem is a substitute For the woman one loves or ought to love, One wild rhapsody a fake for another. You touch the hotel the way you touch moonlight Or sunlight and you hum and the orchestra Hums and you say 'The world in a verse, A generation sealed, men remoter than mountains, Women invisible in music and motion and color,' After that alien, point-blank, green and actual Guatemala.