[New-Poetry] Philosopher/philosophy poems

[jforjames at aol.com]

Last five stanzas from "To an Old Philosopher in Rome" by Wallace Stevens


And you - it is you that speak it, without speech, 
The loftiest syllable among loftiest things, 
The one invulnerable man among 
Crude captains, the naked majesty, if you like, 
Of bird-nest arches and of rain-stained-vaults. 


The sounds drift in. The buildings are remembered. 
The life of the city never lets go, nor do you 
Ever want it to. It is part of the life in your room. 
Its domes are the architecture of your bed. 
The bells keep on repeating solemn names 


In choruses and choirs of choruses, 
Unwilling that mercy should be a mystery 
Of silence, that any solitude of sense 
Should give you more than their peculiar chords 
And reverbations clinging to whisper still. 


It is a kind of total grandeur at the end, 
With every visible thing enlarged and yet 
No more than a bed, a chair and moving nuns, 
The immensest theatre, and pillared porch, 
The book and candle in your ambered room, 


Total grandeur of a total edifice, 
Chosen by an inquisitor of structures 
For himself. He stops upon this threshold, 
As if the design of all his words takes form 
And frame from thinking and is realized.?
?


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/pipermail/new-poetry/attachments/20090410/0445bab0/attachment.html