Sunday Morning

Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her. This is a revelation of that which is not. A mingling of the proper and the wild; A thriving sense of victuals drawn from the lace, A wild consort of this earth’s greatest riches.

A woman’s a profit; so the lilies bloom
Like the syllable of fate as they await. In the absence of God on a Sunday morning
Besides her cedar, full of pollen and lust, Once become affected, unterred, a flower.

We linger in admiration, Of vividness all natural and strange, Where grown men have created their own Guidance in the hugged, broken vegetation, Reflecting on silences, beauty, and selvage.

So off we were into the brink, Then the chill of the clovers turfed, Those are not claimed, and yet they consist In that verdant beauty of the quiet return.

• Wallace Stevens