Thursday 7 November 2013

A Carving in Space


The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven.
Midsummer Night's Dream 5,i


A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts

The difficulty to think at the end of day,
When the shapeless shadow covers the sun
And nothing is left except light on your fur --

There was the cat slopping its milk all day,
Fat cat, red tongue, green mind, white milk
And August the most peaceful month.

To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time,
Without that monument of cat,
The cat forgotten in the moon;

And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light,
In which everything is meant for you
And nothing need be explained;

Then there is nothing to think of.  It comes of itself;
And east rushes west and west rushes down,
No matter.  The grass is full

And full of yourself.  The trees around are for you,
The whole of the wideness of night is for you,
A self that touches all edges,

You become a self that fills the four corners of night.
The red cat hides away in the fur-light
And there you are humped high, humped up,

You are humped higher and higher, black as stone --
You sit with your head like a carving in space
And the little green cat is a bug in the grass.

Wallace Stevens

Rabbit moon

3 comments:

Debra Morris said...


Extraordinary! I keep coming back to these images and the poem. Rabbit....headlights. That's a poet with eyes rolling in frenzy, no doubt in my mind about that. The bunny is bathed in an August light....? Suspended in a moon of amber. I'd love to see the other colours as well: a primary palette. All that green.
The peaceful part bothers me - is August peaceful for bunnies or pussies? Aren't they always out on the rampage, lusting or ripping limb from limb. Faulkner had a different take on August.
Thanks, Mike.

Mike C. said...

Thanks, Debra. Stevens is an amazing poet -- not to everyone's taste, but an awe-inspiring giant if he is to yours. I like the fact that, like Kafka, he worked in insurance.

The top image is an experiment in montage -- a saint in ecstasy from the Bordeaux museum, plus one of my "imaginary planets". The bottom one is the dot on an I on some yellow road painting ("Disabled Parking", I think)in a supermarket car park.

Mike

Martyn Cornell said...

Lovely bit of 'found art', that second image - looks almost Ralph Steadman-like to me, somehow.