The Plain Sense of Things

The plain sense of things Is that the plain sense of things
Is brave and indefinable where
The winter alone is the greatest truth And being in the great precipice, Like a woman stripped of art.

But melancholy is accepted anyway, The sight of a thing as a sight of a seed Always containing memory and awe
Of the deep perfection of all that was Hewn green, turning itself to growth.

Recognition, of a perfect blue, Is something beautiful to realize. The winter returns, and the head holds up
Hints of a belief above the head, A thought exhaled inwardly to beauty.

• Wallace Stevens