Not Ideas About the Thing
but the Thing Itself
At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.
He knew that he heard it,
A bird's cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.
The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow. . . .
It would have been outside.
It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep's faded papier-mâché. . . .
the sun was coming from outside.
the scrawny cry--it was
A chorister whose C preceded the choir.
I was part of the collasal sun,
Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.
Collected Poetry and Prose [Wallace Stevens]
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