One and a Half Weeks Left of National Poetry Month

National Poetry Month is almost over. I admit that I have been fairly preoccupied this month and totally slacking in the poetry department. Recently, though, I did find The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (Vintage Books, 1982) tucked into a hidey hole nook of our bookshelf. I realized I had bought the book years ago but never read it. WHAT?? Sad but true. I haven't finished it yet, but here's a poem written nearly a century ago, yet retains a timeless beauty and relevance. Please enjoy.

Sailing after Lunch by Wallace Stevens

It is the word pejorative that hurts.

My old boat goes round on a crutch

And doesn't get under way.

It's the time of the year.

It's the time of the day.

Perhaps it's the lunch that we had

Or the lunch that we should have had.

But I am, in any case,

A most inappropriate man

In a most unpropitious place.

Mon Dieu, and must never again return.

This heavy historical sail

Through the mustiest blue of the lake

In a really vertiginous boat

Is wholly the vapidest fake. . . . 

It is least what one ever sees.

It is only the way one feels, to say

Where my spirit is I am,

To say light wind worries the sail,

To say the water is swift today,

To expunge all people and be a pupil

Of the gorgeous wheel and so to give

That slight transcendence to the dirty sail,

By light, the way one feels, sharp white,

And then rush brightly through the summer air.