Wallace Stevens




Man Carrying Thing

The poem must resist the intelligence 
Almost successfully. Illustration: 

A brune figure in winter evening resists 
Identity. The thing he carries resists 

The most necessitous sense. Accept them, then,
As secondary (parts not quite perceived 

Of the obvious whole, uncertain particles 
Of the certain solid, the primary free from doubt,
 
Things floating like the first hundred flakes of snow 
Out of a storm we must endure all night, 

Out of a storm of secondary things), 
A horror of thoughts that suddenly are real. 

We must endure our thoughts all night, until 
The bright obvious stands motionless in cold.


spoken = Doug Ross