magiadoreal

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 sun

Children picking up our bones Will never know that these were once As quick as foxes on the hill; And that in autumn, when the grapes Made sharp air sharper by their smell These had a being, breathing frost; And least will guess that with our bones We left much more, left what still is The look of things, left what we felt At what we saw. The spring clouds blow Above the shuttered mansion house, Beyond our gate and the windy sky Cries out a literate despair. We knew for long the mansion's look And what we said of it became A part of what it is ... Children, Still weaving budded aureoles, Will speak our speech and never know, Will say of the mansion that it seems As if he that lived there left behind A spirit storming in blank walls, A dirty house in a gutted world, A tatter of shadows peaked to white, Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.  Wallace Stevens