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“Cortège for Rosenbloom” by Wallace Stevens 🇺🇸 (2 Oct 1879 – 2 Aug 1955)
Now, the wry Rosenbloom is dead
And his finical carriers tread
On a hundred legs, the tread
Of the dead.
Rosenbloom is dead.
​
They carry the wizened one
Of the color of horn
To the sullen hill,
Treading a tread
In unison for the dead.
​
Rosenbloom is dead.
The tread of the carriers does not halt
On the hill, but turns
Up the sky.
They are bearing his body into the sky.
​
It is the infants of misanthropes
And the infants of nothingness
That tread
The wooden ascents
Of the ascending of the dead.
​
It is turbans they wear
And boots of fur
As they tread the boards
In a region of frost,
Viewing the frost,
​
To a chirr of gongs
And a chitter of cries
And the heavy thrum
Of the endless tread
That they tread;
​
To a jangle of doom
And a jumble of words
Of the intense poem
Of the strictest prose
Of Rosenbloom.
​
And they bury him there,
Body and soul,
In a place in the sky.
The lamentable tread!
Rosenbloom is dead.