#positivityandoptimism

BY WALLACE STEVENS  

  I

Just as my fingers on these keys

Make music, so the self-same sounds

On my spirit make a music, too.

Music is feeling, then, not sound;

And thus it is that what I feel,

Here in this room, desiring you,

  Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,

Is music. It is like the strain

Waked in the elders by Susanna;

  Of a green evening, clear and warm,

She bathed in her still garden, while

The red-eyed elders, watching, felt

  The basses of their beings throb

In witching chords, and their thin blood

Pulse pizzicati of Hosanna.

  II

In the green water, clear and warm,

Susanna lay.

She searched

The touch of springs,

And found

Concealed imaginings.

She sighed,

For so much melody.

  Upon the bank, she stood

In the cool

Of spent emotions.

She felt, among the leaves,

The dew

Of old devotions.

  She walked upon the grass,

Still quavering.

The winds were like her maids,

On timid feet,

Fetching her woven scarves,

Yet wavering.

  A breath upon her hand

Muted the night.

She turned —

A cymbal crashed,

Amid roaring horns.

  III

Soon, with a noise like tambourines,

Came her attendant Byzantines.

  They wondered why Susanna cried

Against the elders by her side;

  And as they whispered, the refrain

Was like a willow swept by rain.

  Anon, their lamps' uplifted flame

Revealed Susanna and her shame.

  And then, the simpering Byzantines

Fled, with a noise like tambourines.

  IV

Beauty is momentary in the mind —

The fitful tracing of a portal;

But in the flesh it is immortal.

  The body dies; the body's beauty lives.

So evenings die, in their green going,

A wave, interminably flowing.

So gardens die, their meek breath scenting

The cowl of winter, done repenting.

So maidens die, to the auroral

Celebration of a maiden's choral.

  Susanna's music touched the bawdy strings

Of those white elders; but, escaping,

Left only Death's ironic scraping.

Now, in its immortality, it plays

On the clear viol of her memory,

You can't order a poem like you order a taco.

Walk up to the counter, say, "I'll take two"

and expect it to be handed back to you

on a shiny plate.

Still, I like your spirit.

Anyone who says, "Here's my address,

write me a poem," deserves something in reply.

So I'll tell you a secret instead:

poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,

they are sleeping. They are the shadows

drifting across our ceilings the moment

before we wake up. What we have to do

is live in a way that lets us find them.

Once I knew a man who gave his wife

two skunks for a valentine.

He couldn't understand why she was crying.

"I thought they had such beautiful eyes."

And he was serious. He was a serious man

who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly

just because the world said so. He really

liked those skunks. So, he reinvented them

as valentines and they became beautiful.

At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding

in the eyes of the skunks for centuries

crawled out and curled up at his feet.

Maybe if we reinvent whatever our lives give us

we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock

in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.