Wallace Stevens — The Ultimate Poem Is Abstract

This day writhes with what? The lecturer On This Beautiful World Of Ours composes himself And hems the planet rose and haws it ripe, And red, and right. The particular question—here The particular answer to the particular question Is not in point—the question is in point. If the day writhes, it is not with revelations. One goes on asking questions. That, then, is one Of the categories. So said, this placid space Is changed. It is not so blue as we thought. To be blue, There must be no questions. It is an intellect Of windings round and dodges to and fro, Writhings in wrong obliques and distances, Not an intellect in which we are fleet: present Everywhere in space at once, cloud-pole Of communication. It would be enough If we were ever, just once, at the middle, fixed In This Beautiful World Of Ours and not as now, Helplessly at the edge, enough to be Complete, because at the middle, if only in sense, And in that enormous sense, merely enjoy.