Among the more irritating minor ideas
Of Mr. Homburg during his visits home
To Concord, at the edge of things, was this:
To think away the grass, the trees, the clouds,
Not to transform them into other things,
Is only what the sun does every day,
Until we say to ourselves that there may be
A pensive nature, a mechanical
And slightly detestable operandum, free
From man’s ghost, larger and yet a little like,
Without his literature and without his gods . . .
No doubt we live beyond ourselves in air,
In an element that does not do for us,
so well, that which we do for ourselves, too big,
A thing not planned for imagery or belief,
Not one of the masculine myths we used to make,
A transparency through which the swallow weaves,
Without any form or any sense of form,
What we know in what we see, what we feel in what
We hear, what we are, beyond mystic disputation,
In the tumult of integrations out of the sky,
And what we think, a breathing like the wind,
A moving part of a motion, a discovery
Part of a discovery, a change part of a change,
A sharing of color and being part of it.
The afternoon is visibly a source,
Too wide, too irised, to be more than calm,
Too much like thinking to be less than thought,
Obscurest parent, obscurest patriarch,
A daily majesty of meditation,
That comes and goes in silences of its own.
We think, then as the sun shines or does not.
We think as wind skitters on a pond in a field
Or we put mantles on our words because
The same wind, rising and rising, makes a sound
Like the last muting of winter as it ends.
A new scholar replacing an older one reflects
A moment on this fantasia. He seeks
For a human that can be accounted for.
The spirit comes from the body of the world,
Or so Mr. Homburg thought: the body of a world
Whose blunt laws make an affectation of mind,
The mannerism of nature caught in a glass
And there become a spirit’s mannerism,
A glass aswarm with things going as far as they can.
i loved this poem. it caught my eye, especially the line “And what we think, a breathing like the wind, a moving part of a motion, a discovery part of a discovery, a change part of a change, a sharing of color and being part of it.” It reminded me of the idea that in oder to bring change, you must be the change (like that ghandi quote that seems to be following us everywhere–hahaha) and i was able to relate to that a lot.
This poem seems to be written from a transcendentalist standpoint. I can nearly see Emerson’s all seeing translucent eyeball looking over this poem. There were many nature references. The idea of thinking away the grass and taking it as it is was intriguing. What happens when we stop trying to pin meaning dwon on things and start “being a part of it”?
My favorite passage was
And what we think, a breathing like the wind,
A moving part of a motion, a discovery
Part of a discovery, a change part of a change,
because I like the idea of thinking as breathing, something so regular and necessary for survial. I also like “The spirit comes from the body of the soul.
Also, is Stevens refering to chaos (an element “too big, ” “not planned, ” and “without any form or any sense of form”)?
Another meaning for “breathing like the wind” could be when our own thoughs become meaningless—our thoughts become “a breathing like the wind, /A moving part of a motion” something so regular it loses its meaning.