You're kicking off

your heels and swinging

your sad axe

over your head.

It breaks the cigarette smoke

into wisps before the heavy arc

turns downward, cleaving

Background objects loom and groan;

you're sucking everything into

yourself. The clutter discolors behind

you. The room's corners blanche as the

shelves tilt and disgorge their

fat clay pots.

  

                       Your subject faces

something low in the sky. Trumping the racket,

plucked strings hum. Midbreath. She's still. She will

In the early days

in Hartford, Wallace Stevens

was visited by three witty nymphs.

 

He walked frequently to and from

some square job he held for decades,

but this nymph thing

occurred quite early in the game,

as nymph visits do.

 

When they appeared at the edge

of Elizabeth Park that evening, he held them

at bay with a brown briefcase (monogrammed).

 

     Stevens as St. George against three waifs in slight

     garments: a tweed knight sans chapeau (a spring eve),

     and his foes:

 

                          one armed with intoxicating petals,

     the skinny one with her bewildering silks,

     and the other one.

 

Little is known about the scuffle itself.

Stevens returned home that evening

uncharacteristically disheveled. He

retired to his study and wrote

for the remainder

 

     Scrubbing a wood floor,

entering the grain. Levitating for

a moment on a phrase:

   sudden arrival.

 

     Caring for simple machines—

gate latch, coathook. Small things

with purpose.

 

Each day silence appears like

    water, only a little,

                   just enough to slip on.