Wallace Stevens

Thought tends to collect in pools.

Trees Trees, proud standing people stretching fingertips to the sky, reaching, praying glorious attention, breathing light. strength shelter timeless confidence bending and firm comforting rooted chorus line dancing with the moon, the wind, the clouds framing bursts of stars tender rugged celebration absorbing and releasing life each holy branch holding the power of the Universe. There.

After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption.

One cannot spend one's time in being modern when there are so many more important things to be.

A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman.

The poet makes silk dresses out of worms.

One must have a mind of winter to regard the frost and the boughs of the pine trees, crusted with snow, And have been cold a long time, to behold the junipers, shagged with ice, the spruces, rough in the distant glitter of the January sun, and not to think of any misery in the sound of the wind, in the sound of a few leaves, which is the sound of the land, full of the same wind, blowing in the same bare place for the listener, who listens in the snow, and, nothing herself, beholds nothing that is not there, and the nothing that is.

It was evening all afternoon. It was snowing And it was going to snow. The blackbird sat In the cedar-limbs.

At evening casual flocks of pigeons make Ambiguous undulations as they sink Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

Beauty is momentary in the mind.- The fitful tracing of a portal; But in the flesh it is immortal. The Body dies; the body's beauty lives. So evenings die, in their green going, A wave, interminably flowing. So gardens die, their meek breath scenting The cowl of Winter, done repenting.