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Sunday, January 31, 2010

The Dwarf / Wallace Stevens

     
The Dwarf

Now it is September and the web is woven.
The web is woven and you have to wear it.

The winter is made and you have to bear it,
The winter web, the winter woven, wind and wind,

For all the thoughts of summer that go with it,
In the mind, pupa of straw, moppet of rags.

It is the mind that was woven, the mind that was jerked
And tufted in straggling thunder and shattered sun.

It is all you are, the final dwarf of you,
That is woven and woven and waiting to be worn,

Neither as mask nor as garment but as a being,
Torn from insipid summer, for the mirror of cold,

Sitting beside your lamp, for the citron to nibble
And coffee dribble  . . .  Frost is in the stubble.

---
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), 1937
from Parts of a World, 1942

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Wallace Stevens biography

2 comments:

  1. This is not the Rob Evans Dwarf... heh.

    ReplyDelete
  2. In 1964/1965, Shabtai Zisel / 'Bob Dylan' was being introduced to Wallace Stevens, among others, by Reb Allen Ginsberg. Echoes of Stevens's 1937 'The Dwarf' are present in 'Gates of Eden' (1964 hand-written manuscript) when he speaks of 'The grey flannel dwarf to scream' (the published 1965 lyric reads 'gray flannel dwarf').
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    STEPHAN PICKERING / חפץ ח"ם בן אברהם
    Torah אלילה Yehu'di Apikores / Philologia Kabbalistica Speculativa Researcher
    לחיות זמן רב ולשגשג...לעולם לא עוד
    THE KABBALAH FRACTALS PROJECT
    לעולם לא אשכח

    IN PROGRESS: Shabtai Zisel benAvraham v'Rachel Riva:
    davening in the musematic dark

    ReplyDelete