WALLACE STEVENS MEMORY
1874-1955

What grieves in my sighs
when reading your verse
fructifies like a fresh orange
to remake my life better
when feeding like a sponge
on your youthful words
in your recollected letters
who believes like Keats
that "Beauty is Truth"
from an intimate universe
can never forsake us
but makes us stronger
when hearing a siren or bird
your phrases wait on a me
like a weak nurse a sailor lured
by lovely maiden tears
dissolves in exiled waters
as a missing son or daughter
realized in a forbidden cry
of freedom and rescue
from an old Ovid myth
forbidden to expose
any ancient absurd curse
in a less obvious underworld time
when children from a sung chant
flow as a haven of metamorphosis
to the bird chorus' fountain's abyss,
yet your words feed me
Wallace Stevens
with a new proclivity
hung as harps by your angels
from a Greek mountain
to mourn over a poet's longevity.