I see the love-gesture of his arm
In its green-greasy coat-sleeve
Circling the Book,

And the candles gleaming starkly

On the blotched-paper whiteness of his face,
Like a miswritten psalm

Night by night

I hear his lifted praise,

Like a broken whinnying

Before the Lord's shut gate.

Lights go out

And the stark trunks of the factories
Melt into the drawn darkness,

Sheathing like a seamless garment.

And mothers take home their babies,

Waxen and delicately curled,

Like little potted flowers closed under the stars.

And colors rush together,

Fusing and floating away.

Pale worn gold like the settings of old jewels . Mauve, exquisite, tremulous, and luminous purples, And burning spires in aureoles of light

Like shimmering auras.

They are covering up the pushcarts.

Now all have gone save an old man with mirrors— Little oval mirrors like tiny pools.

He shuffles up a darkened street

And the moon burnishes his mirrors till they shine like phosphorus.

The moon like a skull,

Staring out of eyeless sockets at the old men trundling home the pushcarts.

A sallow dawn is in the sky

As I enter my little green room.
Without, the frail moon,

Worn to a silvery tissue,

Throws a faint glamour on the roofs,

And down the shadowy spires

Lights tip-toe out

Softly as when lovers close street doors.

Out of the Battery

A little wind

Stirs idly as an arm

Trails over a boat's side in dalliance

Rippling the smooth dead surface of the heat,

And Hester street,

Like a forlorn woman over-borne

By many babies at her teats,

Turns on her trampled bed to meet the day.

NEW ORLEANS

Do you remember

Honey-melon moon

Dripping thick sweet light

Where Canal Street saunters off by herself among quiet trees?

And the faint decayed patchouli

Fragrance of New Orleans

New Orleans,

Like a dead tube rose

Upheld in the warm air

Miraculously whole.

WIND IN THE ALLEYS

Wind, rising in the alleys,

My spirit lifts in you like a banner
streaming free of hot walls.
You are full of unshaped dreams
You are laden with beginnings
There is hope in you. . . not sweet
acrid as blood in the mouth.

Come into my tossing dust
Scattering the peace of old deaths,

Wind rising out of the alleys
Carrying stuff of flame.

. . .

Wallace Stevens, of Hartford, Connecticut, is a poet whose peculiar quality is only exceeded by his reticence. He has scrupulously kept out of the public eye, has printed his poetry only at rare intervals and, though much of his work has been highly praised, has steadfastly refused to publish a volume.

Stevens's best work may be found in the three Others anthologies, edited by Alfred Kreymborg. Some of it is penetrative, more than a little is puzzling and all of it is provocative. In spite of what seems a weary disdain, Stevens is a more than skilful decorator and, like T. S. Eliot, combines irony and glamour in a highly original idiom.

PETER QUINCE AT THE CLAVIER

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,

And roaring horns.