Variations On a Fragment From “Nuances of a Theme by Williams”

Nuances of a Theme by Williams
by Wallace Stevens

It’s a strange courage
you give me, ancient star:
 
Shine alone in the sunrise
toward which you lend no part!
 
                          I
Shine alone, shine nakedly, shine like bronze,
that reflects neither my face nor any inner part
of my being, shine like fire, that mirrors nothing.

                         II
Lend no part to any humanity that suffuses
you in its own light.
Be not chimera of morning,
Half-man, half-star.
Be not an intelligence,
Like a widow’s bird
Or an old horse.

Variations On a Fragment From “Nuances of a Theme by Williams”

“Like a widow’s bird
Or an old horse.”
–Wallace Stevens

Like a shaken mat,
A dog’s echo,
A sickle watermark,
A broken plow,
A windowsill housefly,
A long coat,
Fish meal,
Bent scales,
A tilted car,
A hasty note
“A parrot that talks;”

Like spilled crankcase oil,
Toy wooden boats,
Paint chips,
Crumbs on a plastic dish,
Bits of colored foil;

Like an empty posthole,
Or an APARTMENT FOR RENT flier,
Like the sound an old refrigerator makes,
Or rain falling in the yard:
An empty telephone wire.

A bear’s seat,
A boar’s root,
A grey board,
A bent can,
A lost whistle,
A tired tract,
A got goat,
A broken pipe,
Half-chewed gum drops,
A buried tire;
Like colored film on water where cold reflections lie;
Ashes after a burning,
Or stack-smoke coaling the winter sky;
Like a shovel leaned up in a corner
–With its own excuse for being–
Against a shed behind the boundary of a chain link fence;
A vacant lot strewn with litter,
A field full of grey tents;

Or… like a ragged book
Discarded in a muddy entryway,
From which rise flapping in the tireless wind
Excuses for experience.