A HIGH-TONED OLD CHRISTIAN WOMAN
by: Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
- OETRY is the supreme fiction,
madame.
- Take the moral law and make a nave of it
- And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus,
- The conscience is converted into palms,
- Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.
- We agree in principle. That's clear. But take
- The opposing law and make a peristyle,
- And from the peristyle project a masque
- Beyond the planets. Thus, our bawdiness,
- Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last,
- Is equally converted into palms,
- Squiggling like saxophones. And palm for palm,
- Madame, we are where we began. Allow,
- Therefore, that in the planetary scene
- Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed,
- Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade,
- Proud of such novelties of the sublime,
- Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk,
- May, merely may, madame, whip from themselves
- A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres.
- This will make widows wince. But fictive things
- Wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince.
"A High-Toned Old Christian
Woman" is reprinted from The Dial, July 1922. |
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