Wallace Stevens

The Reader

All night I sat reading a book,
Sat reading as if in a book
Of somber pages.

It was autumn and falling stars
covered the shrivelled forms
Crouched in the moonlight.

No lamp was burning as I read,
A voice was mumbling, "Everything
Falls back to coldness,

Even the musky muscadines,
The melons, the vermilion pears
Of the leafless garden."

The sombre pages bore no pr=int
Except the trace of burning stars
In the frosty heaven.

Girl in a Nightgown

Lights out. Shades up.
A look at the weather.
There has been a booming all the spring,
A refrain from the end of the boulevards.

This is the silence of night,
This is what could not be shaken,
Full of stars and the images of stars--
And that booming wintry and dull,

Like a tottering, a falling and an end,
Again and again, always there,
Massive drums and leaden trumpets,
Perceived by feeling instead of sense,

A revolution of things colliding,
Phrases! But of fear and of fate.
The night should be warm and fluter's fortune
Should play in the tress when morning comes.

once it was, the repose of night,
Was a place, strong place, in which to sleep.
It is shaken now. It will burst into flames,
Either now or tomorrow or the day after that.