96
PARTISAN REVIEW
"Bethou me," says the sparrow to the speckled blade in Stevens's
Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction,
and then, in a burst of musical
megalomania, the injunction
is
extended to include us, the readers:
"And you and you bethou me and bethou...." Further on, the
poet
himself urges that the singer be obeyed, "Bethou him you and you,
bethou
him
and bethou...." Suppose we obey and yield up our
identity to that of the poet. At least we know where we are:
in
a
park, that was once a sacred wood, on a day free from work
that
was once a holy day. And our words, whether new or old, will
be
rare and bright, and whatever we speak of, whether it be of love or
death or politics or prayer or pleasure or pain,
will
be transformed
into poetry, the poetry of our time, into a suave yet saving
poetic
language of our age.
