[New-Poetry] another Stevens related poem we missed...

[James Cervantes]

Terrific.  Thanks for making it known.

- Jim

On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 11:30 AM, <jforjames at aol.com> wrote:
> For months now I'm sure I'll be running across poems, like this one by
> Richard Blanco...
>
> Tía Olivia Serves Wallace Stevens a Cuban Egg
>
> The ration books voided, there was little to eat,
> so Tía Olivia ruffled four hens to serve Stevens
> a fresh criollo egg. The singular image lay limp,
> floating in a circle of miniature roses and vines
> etched around the edges of the rough dish.
> The saffron, inhuman soul staring at Stevens
> who asks what yolk is this, so odd a yellow?
>
> Tell me Señora, if you know, he petitions,
> what exactly is the color of this temptation:
> I can see a sun, but it is not the color of suns
> nor of sunflowers, nor the yellows of Van Gogh,
> it is neither corn nor school pencil, as it is,
> so few things are yellow, this, even more precise.
>
> He shakes some salt, eye to eye hypothesizing:
> a carnival of hues under the gossamer membrane,
> a liqueur of convoluted colors, quarter-part orange,
> imbued shadows, watercolors running a song
> down the spine of praying stems, but what, then,
> of the color of the stems, what green for the leaves,
> what color the flowers; what of order for our eyes
> if I can not name this elusive yellow, Señora?
>
> Intolerant, Tía Olivia bursts open Stevens's yolk,
> plunging into it with a sharp piece of Cuban toast:
> It is yellow, she says, amarillo y nada más, bien?
> The unleashed pigments begin to fill the plate,
> overflow on to the embroidered place mats,
> stream down the table and through the living room
> setting all the rocking chairs in motion then
> over the mill tracks cutting through cane fields,
> a viscous mass downing palm trees and shacks.
>
> In its frothy wake whole choirs of church ladies
> clutch their rosary beads and sing out in Latin,
> exhausted macheteros wade in the stream,
> holding glinting machetes overhead with one arm;
> cafeteras, '57 Chevys, uniforms and empty bottles,
> mangy dogs and fattened pigs saved from slaughter,
> Soviet jeeps, Bohemia magazines, park benches,
> all carried in the egg lava carving the molested valley
> and emptying into the sea. Yellow, Stevens relents,
> Yes. But then what the color of the sea, Señora?
>
>
> >From CITY OF A HUNDRED FIRES (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998)
> http://www.smith.edu/poetrycenter/poets/tiaolivia.html
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