Sunday, November 18, 2007

A "Martial Cadenza" ...

“It was like sudden time in a world without time
This world, this place, the street in which I was,
Without time: as that which is not has no time,
Is not, or is of what there was, is full
Of the silence before the armies, armies without
Either trumpets or drums, the commanders mute, the arms
On the ground, fixed fast in a profound defeat.”

“The present close, the present realized,
Not the symbol but that for which the symbol stands,
The vivid thing in the air that never changes,
Though the air change. Only this evening I saw it again,
At the beginning of winter, and I walked and talked
Again, and lived and was again, and breathed again
And moved again and flashed again, time flashed again.”

(Wallace Stevens, “Martial Cadenza”)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I dont understand this darn poem!!!!!!!!