One chemical afternoon in mid-autumn, <br />When the grand mechanics of earth and sky were near; <br />Even the leaves of the locust were yellow then, <br /> <br />He walked with his year-old boy on his shoulder. <br />The sun shone and the dog barked and the baby slept. <br />The leaves, even of the locust, the green locust. <br /> <br />He wanted and looked for a final refuge, <br />From the bombastic intimations of winter <br />And the martyrs a la mode. He walked toward <br /> <br />An abstract, of which the sun, the dog, the boy <br />Were contours. Cold was chilling the wide-moving swans. <br />The leaves were falling like notes from a piano. <br /> <br />The abstract was suddenly there and gone again. <br />The negroes were playing football in the park. <br />The abstract that he saw, like the locust-leaves, plainly: <br /> <br />The premiss from which all things were conclusions, <br />The noble, Alexandrine verve. The flies <br />And the bees still sought the chrysanthemums’ odor.<br /><br />Wallace Stevens<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/contrary-theses-ii/
