Wallace Stevens - Disillusionment of Ten OClock

Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock

The houses are haunted By white night-gowns. None are green and black, Like the columbine.

The martini and the tawny And the quicksilver arms, Beware the snoring Through the rooms of sleep.

The bears, half-asleep, On the white moons of the air. The snoring is so grave It wears the world.

Drunken evenings of silk Where nothing happens at all, We hear our wives sigh Behind the walls.

With dim passions of the soul, And the sense of why, They wander and wander, Get into things, for desire,

The only breath of life, Falls asleep on the balcony Of this silent hour.

— Wallace Stevens, “Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock”