Light the first light of evening, as in a room,
In which we rest, and for small reason think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.
This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:
Within a single thing, a single shawl,
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.
Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.
Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one …
How high that highest candle lights the dark.
Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.
-Wallace Stevens, The Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour
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3 Comments
While I am fully aware that Wallace Stevens is much lauded, he has not been one of my preferred poets over the years. (Blasphemy, I know.)
This poem, however, I find lovely. Thank you for this.
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I much prefer this poem to the Anecdote of a Jar…:)
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Love this. Even if I can’t pretend to understand it.
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