Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction

It must be abstract. It must change. It must give pleasure. It must be useless. It must be natural And therefore real in nature, A little like the garden– The sweet semblance, A little where the light interposes.

It must be a natural thing, Just where things end as they begin, And stand apart from the rest In shades, the hue of nature. When the shadows grow long, Let there be beauty, beauty in the space, In all the emptiness, As long as the breath flows, As long as the trees stand as trees, And life helps.

— Wallace Stevens, “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction”

• Wallace Stevens