Wallace Stevens: The Idea of Order at Key West

She sang beyond the genius of the sea. 
The water never formed to mind or voice, 
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion 
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry, 
That was not ours although we understood, 
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

The sea was not a mask. No more was she. 
The song and water were not medleyed sound 
Even if what she sang was what she heard, 
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred 
The grinding water and the gasping wind; 
But it was she and not the sea we heard.

For she was the maker of the song she sang. 
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing. 
Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew 
It was the spirit that we sought and knew 
That we should ask this often as she sang.

If it was only the dark voice of the sea 
That rose, or even colored by many waves; 
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled, 
However clear, it would have been deep air, 
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound 
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone. But it was more than that, 
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind, 
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped 
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres 
Of sky and sea.

                           It was her voice that made 
The sky acutest at its vanishing. 
She measured to the hour its solitude. 
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea, 
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we, 
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her 
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know, 
Why, when the singing ended and we turned 
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights, 
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there, 
As the night descended, tilting in the air, 
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea, 
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles, 
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon, 
The maker’s rage to order words of the sea, 
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred, 
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

Wallace Stevens: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

I
Among twenty snowy mountains, 
The only moving thing 
Was the eye of the blackbird. 

II
I was of three minds, 
Like a tree 
In which there are three blackbirds. 

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. 
It was a small part of the pantomime. 

IV
A man and a woman 
Are one. 
A man and a woman and a blackbird 
Are one. 

V
I do not know which to prefer, 
The beauty of inflections 
Or the beauty of innuendoes, 
The blackbird whistling 
Or just after. 

VI
Icicles filled the long window 
With barbaric glass. 
The shadow of the blackbird 
Crossed it, to and fro. 
The mood 
Traced in the shadow 
An indecipherable cause. 

VII
O thin men of Haddam, 
Why do you imagine golden birds? 
Do you not see how the blackbird 
Walks around the feet 
Of the women about you? 

VIII
I know noble accents 
And lucid, inescapable rhythms; 
But I know, too, 
That the blackbird is involved 
In what I know. 

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight, 
It marked the edge 
Of one of many circles. 

X
At the sight of blackbirds 
Flying in a green light, 
Even the bawds of euphony 
Would cry out sharply. 

XI
He rode over Connecticut 
In a glass coach. 
Once, a fear pierced him, 
In that he mistook 
The shadow of his equipage 
For blackbirds. 

XII
The river is moving. 
The blackbird must be flying. 

XIII
It was evening all afternoon. 
It was snowing 
And it was going to snow. 
The blackbird sat 
In the cedar-limbs.