The Plain Sense of Things

Photo by Christian Hänsel

After the leaves have fallen, we return 

To a plain sense of things. It is as if 

We had come to an end of the imagination, 

Inanimate in an inert savoir.

It is difficult even to choose the adjective 

For this blank cold, this sadness without cause. 

The great structure has become a minor house. 

No turban walks across the lessened floors.

The greenhouse never so badly needed paint. 

The chimney is fifty years old and slants to one side. 

A fantastic effort has failed, a repetition 

In a repetitiousness of men and flies.

Yet the absence of the imagination had

Itself to be imagined. The great pond,

The plain sense of it, without reflections, leaves,

Mud, water like dirty glass, expressing silence

Of a sort, silence of a rat come out to see,

The great pond and its waste of the lilies, all this

Had to be imagined as an inevitable knowledge,

Required, as a necessity requires.

~ Wallace Stevens

The Plain Sense of Things

Photo by Christian Hänsel

After the leaves have fallen, we return 

To a plain sense of things. It is as if 

We had come to an end of the imagination, 

Inanimate in an inert savoir.

It is difficult even to choose the adjective 

For this blank cold, this sadness without cause. 

The great structure has become a minor house. 

No turban walks across the lessened floors.

The greenhouse never so badly needed paint. 

The chimney is fifty years old and slants to one side. 

A fantastic effort has failed, a repetition 

In a repetitiousness of men and flies.

Yet the absence of the imagination had

Itself to be imagined. The great pond,

The plain sense of it, without reflections, leaves,

Mud, water like dirty glass, expressing silence

Of a sort, silence of a rat come out to see,

The great pond and its waste of the lilies, all this

Had to be imagined as an inevitable knowledge,

Required, as a necessity requires.

~ Wallace Stevens

On the Road Home

It was when I said,

"There is no such thing as the truth,"

That the grapes seemed fatter.

The fox ran out of his hole.

You. . . You said,

"There are many truths,

But they are not parts of a truth."

Then the tree, at night, began to change,

Smoking through green and smoking blue.

We were two figures in a wood.

We said we stood alone.

It was when I said,

"Words are not forms of a single word.

In the sum of the parts, there are only the parts.
The world must be measured by eye";

It was when you said,

"The idols have seen lots of poverty,

Snakes and gold and lice,

But not the truth";

It was at that time, that the silence was largest
And longest, the night was roundest,

The fragments of the autumn warmest,

Closest and strongest.

~ Wallace Stevens

_______________________________________

Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road. ~ Voltaire

On the Road Home

It was when I said,

"There is no such thing as the truth,"

That the grapes seemed fatter.

The fox ran out of his hole.

You. . . You said,

"There are many truths,

But they are not parts of a truth."

Then the tree, at night, began to change,

Smoking through green and smoking blue.

We were two figures in a wood.

We said we stood alone.

It was when I said,

"Words are not forms of a single word.

In the sum of the parts, there are only the parts.
The world must be measured by eye";

It was when you said,

"The idols have seen lots of poverty,

Snakes and gold and lice,

But not the truth";

It was at that time, that the silence was largest
And longest, the night was roundest,

The fragments of the autumn warmest,

Closest and strongest.

~ Wallace Stevens

_______________________________________

Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road. ~ Voltaire