The Man with the Blue Guitar (XV)

XV

Is this picture of Picasso's, this "hoard
Of destructions," a picture of ourselves,

Now, an image of our society?
Do I sit, deformed, a naked egg,

Catching at Good-bye, harvest moon,
Without seeing the harvest or the moon?

Things as they are have been destroyed.
Have I? Am I a man that is dead

At a table on which the food is cold?
Is my thought a memory, not alive?

Is the spot on the floor, there, wine or blood
And whichever it may be, is it mine?

---

Wallace Stevens
from The Man with the Blue Guitar, 1937

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Read the complete poem here.

Wallace Stevens biography