[from Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction, by Wallace Stevens:]
III
The great statue of the General Du Puy
Rested immobile, though neighboring catfalques
Bore off the residents of its noble place.
The right, uplifted foreleg of the horse
Suggested that, at the final funeral,
The music halted and the horse stood still.
On Sundays, lawyers in their promenades
Approached this strongly-heightened effigy
To study the past, and doctors, having bathed
Themselves with care, sought out the nerveless frame
Of a suspension, a permanence, so rigid
That it made the General a bit absurd,
Changed his true flesh to an inhuman bronze.
There never had been, never could be, such
A man. The lawyers disbelieved, the doctors
Said that as keen, illustrious ornament,
As a setting for geraniums, the General,
The very Place Du Puy, in fact, belonged
Among our more vestigial states of mind.
Nothing had happened because nothing had changed.
Yet the General was rubbish in the end.
[...]
[All rights reserved by the author's estate - Please do not copy]
III
The great statue of the General Du Puy
Rested immobile, though neighboring catfalques
Bore off the residents of its noble place.
The right, uplifted foreleg of the horse
Suggested that, at the final funeral,
The music halted and the horse stood still.
On Sundays, lawyers in their promenades
Approached this strongly-heightened effigy
To study the past, and doctors, having bathed
Themselves with care, sought out the nerveless frame
Of a suspension, a permanence, so rigid
That it made the General a bit absurd,
Changed his true flesh to an inhuman bronze.
There never had been, never could be, such
A man. The lawyers disbelieved, the doctors
Said that as keen, illustrious ornament,
As a setting for geraniums, the General,
The very Place Du Puy, in fact, belonged
Among our more vestigial states of mind.
Nothing had happened because nothing had changed.
Yet the General was rubbish in the end.
[...]
[All rights reserved by the author's estate - Please do not copy]
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