96
PARTISAN REVIEW
Complacencies of the peignor, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedo'm of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe.
As a calm darkens among water lights
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.
In
this
magnificent and prophetic poem Stevens actually ex·
plores the possibility of a Sunday Morning which can have more
meaning to us than even the believer's:
Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
He asks. And he envisages, if not a new religion, then at least
a new rite:
Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
Shall chant in orgy on a sUmmer morn
T heir boisterous devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but as a god might be.
But it might be argued that if in announcing the possibility of
a new faith, and in summing up for us the resonance of the old,
Stevens took on the major accent of the total poet, yet this was true
of him only in one exceptional and very great poem. What about
the rest of his poetry, so concerned with distraction and amusement?
