Continual Conversation With A Silent Man

Wallace Stevens 1879 (Reading) – 1955 (Hartford)



The old brown hen and the old blue sky,
Between the two we live and die--
The broken cartwheel on the hill.

As if, in the presence of the sea,
We dried our nets and mended sail
And talked of never-ending things,

Of the never-ending storm of will,
One will and many wills, and the wind,
Of many meanings in the leaves,

Brought down to one below the eaves,
Link, of that tempest, to the farm,
The chain of the turquoise hen and sky

And the wheel that broke as the cart went by.
It is not a voice that is under the eaves.
It is not speech, the sound we hear

In this conversation, but the sound
Of things and their motion: the other man,
A turquoise monster moving round.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

39 sec read
68

Quick analysis:

Scheme AAB XXX BXC CXA ACX DXD
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 658
Words 133
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3

Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. more…

All Wallace Stevens poems | Wallace Stevens Books

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