Wallace Stevens' Voice In 'of Mere Being', Other Late Poems Poem by Dennis Ryan

Sunday afternoon, January 6,2019; Tuesday, June 21,2022

'At the earliest end of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.'
--Wallace Stevens, 'Not Ideas About The Thing But The Thing Itself'

'A gold-feathered bird/Sings in the palm...'
--Wallace Stevens, 'Of Mere Being'

The bird's scrawny cry heard. Outside his window.
Things spoke for themselves in Stevens' late poems,
and he internalized their sounds as he grew old, older:
he was listening for a certain key, in search of certain
sounds as he knew full-well that the sensible world
was far stronger than any metaphor he could conjure.
Wherefore then that gold-feathered bird, that palm?
They are as real as we are: calls issued from outside
his Hartford home all the way down to a Key West
hotel room window. Sights and sounds—the rustle
of palm fronds at night. He sought a certain measure
to give voice to emotions that belonged to him alone.