Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock ~by Wallace Stevens

Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock

by Wallace Stevens

poet 1879-1955

****************

The houses are haunted

By white night gowns.

None are green,

Or purple with green rings,

Or green with yellow rings,

Or yellow with blue rings.

None of them are strange,

With socks of lace

And beaded ceintures.

People are not going

To dream of baboons and periwinkles.

Only, here and there, an old sailor,

Drunk and asleep in his boots,

Catches tigers

In red weather.

~Wallace Stevens

True Story

BLACKBIRD

poetry from 13 Ways to Look at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens

original/altered photographs by Mimi Foxmorton

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,   

The only moving thing   

Was the eye of the blackbird.  

II

I was of three minds,   

Like a tree   

In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.   

It was a small part of the pantomime.   

IV

A man and a woman   

Are one.   

A man and a woman and a blackbird   

Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,   

The beauty of inflections   

Or the beauty of innuendos,   

The blackbird whistling   

Or just after. 

VI

Icicles filled the long window   

With barbaric glass.   

The shadow of the blackbird   

Crossed it, to and fro.   

The mood   

Traced in the shadow   

An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam,   

Why do you imagine golden birds?   

Do you not see how the blackbird   

Walks around the feet   

Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents   

And lucid, inescapable rhythms;   

But I know, too,   

That the blackbird is involved   

In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,   

It marked the edge   

Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds   

Flying in a green light,   

Even the bawds of euphony   

Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut   

In a glass coach.   

Once, a fear pierced him,   

In that he mistook   

The shadow of his equipage   

For blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.   

The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.   

It was snowing   

And it was going to snow.   

The blackbird sat   

In the cedar-limbs.

Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. 

Copyright 1954 by Wallace Stevens. 

LAVENDER LIAISON

LAVENDER LIAISON

by Foxmorton

Wild Belle

Charmed bone

Rag

her dream of   Paris

Black Fleece

Shimmering Horror

Innocence Lost

Embrace the power

Sleep No More

~MF