Beauty is momentary in the mind — The fitful tracing of a portal; But in the flesh it is immortal. The body dies; the body's beauty lives. So evening… - Wallace Stevens

Beauty is momentary in the mind — The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.

The body dies; the body's beauty lives.
So evenings die, in their green going,
A wave, interminably flowing.

That tuft of jungle feathers, That animal eye, Is just what you say. That savage of fire, That seed, Have it your way. The world is ugly, And the people are sad.

A. A violent order is disorder; and B. A great disorder is an order. These Two things are one.

The Poem That Took The Place Of A Mountain

There it was, word for word,
The poem that took the place of a mountain.

He breathed its oxygen,
Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table.

It reminded him how he had needed
A place to go to in his own direction

How he had recomposed the pines,
Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds

For the outlook that would be right,
Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion:

The exact rock where his inexactness
Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged

Where he could lie and gazing down at the sea,
Recognize his unique and solitary home.