Page:Harmonium - Wallace Stevens.djvu/50

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So much for that. The affectionate emigrant foundA new reality in parrot-squawks.Yet let that trifle pass. Now, as this oddDiscoverer walked through the harbor streetsInspecting the cabildo, the façadeOf the cathedral, making notes, he heardA rumbling, west of Mexico, it seemed,Approaching like a gasconade of drums.The white cabildo darkened, the façade,As sullen as the sky, was swallowed upIn swift, successive shadows, dolefully.The rumbling broadened as it fell. The wind,Tempestuous clarion, with heavy cry,Came bluntly thundering, more terribleThan the revenge of music on bassoons.Gesticulating lightning, mystical,Made pallid flitter. Crispin, here, took flight.An annotator has his scruples, too.He knelt in the cathedral with the rest,This connoisseur of elemental fate,Aware of exquisite thought. The storm was oneOf many proclamations of the kind,Proclaiming something harsher than he learnedFrom hearing signboards whimper in cold nightsOr seeing the midsummer artificeOf heat upon his pane. This was the spanOf force, the quintessential fact, the noteOf Vulcan, that a valet seeks to own,The thing that makes him envious in phrase.
And while the torrent on the roof still dronedHe felt the Andean breath. His mind was freeAnd more than free, elate, intent, profound

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