Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame. <br />Take the moral law and make a nave of it <br />And from the nave build haunted heaven.Thus, <br />The conscience is converted into palms, <br />Like windy citherns hankering for hymns. <br />We agree in principle.That's clear.But take <br />The opposing law and make a peristyle, <br />And from the peristyle project a masque <br />Beyond the planets.Thus, our bawdiness, <br />Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last, <br />Is equally converted into palms, <br />Squiggling like saxophones.And palm for palm, <br />Madame, we are where we began.Allow, <br />Therefore, that in the planetary scene <br />Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed, <br />Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade, <br />Proud of such novelties of the sublime, <br />Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk, <br />May, merely may, madame, whip from themselves <br />A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres. <br />This will make widows wince.But fictive things <br />Wink as they will.Wink most when widows wince.<br /><br />Wallace Stevens<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-high-toned-old-christian-woman/
