Last Lines from Wallace Stevens 1

In red weatherVermont throws itself togetherunder its mattress of vines.

The wind pours downin the cedar-limbs,their musky and tingling tongues,

and I remembered the cry of peacocks,the stillness in all in the key of that desolate sound,the curtains are stiff and prim and still,

and the people are sadthat imagination that we spurned and cravehas rather a classical sound.

In any book,the only emperor is the emperor of ice cream,of flesh and air,

of this ecstatic air—like the wind that lashes everything at onceand pierces the physical fix of things,

the fresh night,joyous and jubilant and sure,made visible.