If there must be a god in the house, must be, Saying things in the room and on the stair, Let him move as the sunlight moves on the floor, Or moonlig… - Wallace Stevens

If there must be a god in the house, must be,
Saying things in the rooms and on the stair,

Let him move as the sunlight moves on the floor,
Or moonlight, silently, as Plato's ghost

Or Aristotle's skeleton. Let him hang out
His stars on the wall. He must dwell quietly.

Like a page of music, like an upper air, Like a momentary color, in which swans Were seraphs, were saints, were changing essences. <p> The west wind was the music, the motion, the force To which the swans curveted, a will to change, A will to make iris frettings on the blank.

That I may reduce the monster to Myself, and then may be myself In face of the monster, be more than part Of it, more than the monstrous player of One of its monstrous lutes, not be Alone, but reduce the monster and be, Two things, the two together as one, And play of the monster and of myself, Or better not of myself at all, But of that as its intelligence, Being the lion in the lute Before the lion locked in stone.

Reality is the beginning not the end, Naked Alpha, not the hierophant Omega, Of dense investiture, with luminous vassals.