Wednesday, July 6, 2011

The Man with the Blue Guitar (XXVIII)


XXVIII

I am a native in this world
And think in it as a native thinks,

Gesu, not native of a mind
Thinking the thoughts I call my own,

Native, a native in the world
And like a native think in it.

It could not be a mind, the wave
In which the watery grasses flow

And yet are fixed as a photograph,
The wind in which the dead leaves blow.

Here I inhale profounder strength
And as I am, I speak and move

And things are as I think they are
And say they are on the blue guitar.

---
Wallace Stevens
from The Man with the Blue Guitar, 1937

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

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