The Idea of Order at Key West

She sang beyond the genius of the sea. The water never formed to mind Of man or of woman.

In solitude, one’s own image, strange As viewed through the veil of that poetry, The sea was not a woman, mindless,

But an image of the body of a woman, And the singing was that made the body live. It was the dead that listened
To what the sea was.

• Wallace Stevens