Stevens

Color Record No. 20, Side A:

and here’s some blank verse, which is what I’ll be doing for another while  J

The Idea of Order at Key West

By Wallace Stevens

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.  

The water never formed to mind or voice,  

Like a body wholly body, fluttering

Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion  

Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,  

That was not ours although we understood,  

Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

The sea was not a mask. No more was she.  

The song and water were not medleyed sound  

Even if what she sang was what she heard,  

Since what she sang was uttered word by word.

It may be that in all her phrases stirred  

The grinding water and the gasping wind;  

But it was she and not the sea we heard.

For she was the maker of the song she sang.  

The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea

Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.  

Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew  

It was the spirit that we sought and knew  

That we should ask this often as she sang.

If it was only the dark voice of the sea  

That rose, or even colored by many waves;  

If it was only the outer voice of sky

And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,  

However clear, it would have been deep air,  

The heaving speech of air, a summer sound  

Repeated in a summer without end

And sound alone. But it was more than that,  

More even than her voice, and ours, among

The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,  

Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped  

On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres  

Of sky and sea.

                      It was her voice that made  

The sky acutest at its vanishing.  

She measured to the hour its solitude.  

She was the single artificer of the world

In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,  

Whatever self it had, became the self

That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,  

As we beheld her striding there alone,

Knew that there never was a world for her  

Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,  

Why, when the singing ended and we turned  

Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,  

The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,  

As the night descended, tilting in the air,  

Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,  

Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,  

Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,  

The maker’s rage to order words of the sea,  

Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,  

And of ourselves and of our origins,

In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.