Wallace Stevens

Here you will find the Poem Contrary Theses (II) of poet Wallace Stevens

Contrary Theses (II)

One chemical afternoon in mid-autumn, 
When the grand mechanics of earth and sky were near; 
Even the leaves of the locust were yellow then, 

He walked with his year-old boy on his shoulder. 
The sun shone and the dog barked and the baby slept. 
The leaves, even of the locust, the green locust. 

He wanted and looked for a final refuge, 
From the bombastic intimations of winter 
And the martyrs a la mode. He walked toward 

An abstract, of which the sun, the dog, the boy 
Were contours. Cold was chilling the wide-moving swans. 
The leaves were falling like notes from a piano. 

The abstract was suddenly there and gone again. 
The negroes were playing football in the park. 
The abstract that he saw, like the locust-leaves, plainly: 

The premiss from which all things were conclusions, 
The noble, Alexandrine verve. The flies 
And the bees still sought the chrysanthemums? odor.