Page:Harmonium - Wallace Stevens.djvu/61

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May, after all, stop short before a plumAnd be content and still be realist.The words of things entangle and confuse.The plum survives its poems. It may hangIn the sunshine placidly, colored by groundObliquities of those who pass beneath,Harlequined and mazily dewed and mauvedIn bloom. Yet it survives in its own form,Beyond these changes, good, fat, guzzly fruit.So Crispin hasped on the surviving form,For him, of shall or ought to be in is.
Was he to bray this in profoundest brassArointing his dreams with fugal requiems?Was he to company vastest things defunctWith a blubber of tom-toms harrowing the sky?Scrawl a tragedian's testament? ProlongHis active force in an inactive dirge,Which, let the tall musicians call and call,Should merely call him dead? Pronounce amenThrough choirs infolded to the outmost clouds?Because he built a cabin who once plannedLoquacious columns by the ructive sea?Because he turned to salad-beds again?Jovial Crispin, in calamitous crape?Should he lay by the personal and makeOf his own fate an instance of all fate?What is one man among so many men?What are so many men in such a world?Can one man think one thing and think it long?Can one man be one thing and be it long?The very man despising honest quiltsLies quilted to his poll in his despite.For realists, what is is what should be.

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