BOOKS
51
This is' the way, then, in which Stevens answers these sudden mobs of
men, these sudden clouds of faces and arms: he justifies poetry, he
defines its place, its role, its priceless value. Nothing could be more
characteristic of this poet, of his virtues and also of his limitations, and
one cannot think of an answer of greater propriety.
The second sequence of poems, "Owl's Clover," consists of five
meditations in blank verse, all of them concerned with extending the
theme of the fate of art amid terrifying change and destruction, and
envisaging the kind of place toward which history is moving:
Shall you,
Then, fear a drastic community evolved
From the whirling, slewly and by trial; or fear
-Men gathering for a final flight of men,
An abysmal migration into possible blue?
The fear is in the foreground and is complicated by the themes which
were Stevens' direct subject in
Harmonium,
the brutality and chaos of
Nature, which is here figured forth in a new symbol, Africa; and also
the absence of belief, the departure of God, the angels, and heaven. The
attitudes toward what is to come are complex and ambiguous, as they
ought to be. The poet can only regard the possibilities which he fears
and state his hope:
Basilewsky in the bandstand played
«Concerto for Airplane and Pianoforte,"
The newest Soviet reclame. Profound
Abortion, fit for the enchanting of basilisks ...•
What man of folk-lore shall rebuild the world,
What lesser man shall measure sun and moon,
What super-animal dictate our fates?
As the man the state, not as the state the man.
But finally and unequivocally, in the last poem of the volume, the poet
salutes the men that are falling, for whom God and the angels have be-
come identical with the cause for which they are faIling:
Taste of the blood upon his martyred lips,
o
pensioners,
0
demagogues and pay-men!
This death was his belief, though death is a stone
This man loved earth, not heaven, enough to die.
This is clearly a poetry which flows from a mind in love not only with
the beautiful, but also with the just.
There are, however, distinct limitations also. From beginning to end,
in
HQlmonium
as well as in the present volume, these poems are absorbed
in "responses" to various facts. They are absorbed to such an extent
that the facts can scarcely get into the poems at all. We may compare
Stevensto William Carlos Williams, whom he admires and who may be
said t<lrepresent the other extreme, a poet whose whole effort is to get
facts into his poem with the greatest exactitude and to keep everything
