Men Made Out of Words / Wallace Stevens

Men Made Out of Words

What should we be without the sexual myth,
The human revery or poem of death?

Castratos of moon-mash – Life consists
Of propositions about life. The human

Revery is a solitude, in which
We compose these propositions, torn by dreams,

By the terrible incantations of defeats
And by the fear that defeats and dreams are one.

The whole race is a poet that writes down
The eccentric propositions of its fate.

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Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), 1946
from Transport to Summer, 1947

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Wallace Stevens biography