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October 13, 2008

TT: Almanac

At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.

He knew that he heard it,
A bird's cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.

The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow....
It would have been outside.

It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep's faded papier-mache....
The sun was coming from outside.

That scrawny cry--it was
A chorister whose C preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,

Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.

Wallace Stevens, "Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself"

Posted October 13, 2008 12:00 AM

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