It Must Give Pleasure

It Must Give Pleasure

To sing jubilas at exact,
accustomed times,
To be crested
and wear the mane of a multitude
And so, as part,
to exult with its great throat,

To speak of joy and to sing of it,
borne on the shoulders of joyous men,
to feel the heart that is the common,
the bravest fundament,

This is a facile exercise.
Jerome Begat the tubas
and the fire-wind strings,
The golden fingers picking dark-blue air:

For companies of voices moving there,
To find of sound the bleakest ancestor,
To find of light a music issuing

Whereon it falls in more than sensual mode.
But the difficultest rigor is forthwith,
On the image of what we see,
to catch from that

Irrational moment its unreasoning,
As when the sun comes rising,
when the sea clears deeply,
when the moon hangs on the wall

Of heaven-haven.
These are not things transformed.
Yet we are shaken by them
as if they were.
We reason about them
with a later reason.

Wallace Stevens

Posted over on Poemhunter