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