Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction

I The palm stands on the edge of space, The palm stands in the square of the sky, And to be, no more than being.

The palm is full of summer, scars, All possible gods are in light and air, Compels these thoughts, this understanding;

The lives of the leaves become within. The lights are bright, and the ground so elegant. Illuminated all, its multiplicity, Of pure form; why isolate, then?

II From what it is possible to see,
The universe. That is the design
And the design is part of being what should become.

To be, to find out what is true, to perceive. Words that remain. The future of the butterfly
Must fulfill as the stars, insistence of the thought.

III But a blade of the swaying green grass
Must ache for the idea of its being the essential thought. For a rain of many things must reflect the sun. And many poets must awaken.

• Wallace Stevens