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“Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour” by Wallace Stevens 🇺🇸 (2 Oct 1879 – 2 Aug 1955)
Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.
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This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:
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Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.
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Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.
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Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one …
How high that highest candle lights the dark.
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Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.