The Man with the Blue Guitar (I)

I

The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."

The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."

And they said then, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,

A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."

---

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
from The Man with the Blue Guitar, 1937

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Read the complete poem here.

Wallace Stevens biography