An Ordinary Evening in New Haven

XXVIII from An Ordinary Evening in New Haven by Wallace Stevens

If it should be true that reality exists

In the mind: the tin plate, the loaf of bread on it,

The long-bladed knife, the little to drink and her

Misericordia, it follows that

Real and unreal are two in one: New Haven

Before and after one arrives or, say,

Bergamo on a postcard, Rome after dark,

Sweden described, Salzburg with shaded eyes

Or Paris in conversation at a café.

This endlessly elaborating poem

Displays the theory of poetry,

As the life of poetry. A more severe,

More harassing master would extemporize

Subtler, more urgent proof that the theory

Of poetry is the theory of life,

As it is, in the intricate evasions of as,

In things seen and unseen, created from nothingness,

The heavens, the hells, the worlds, the longed-for lands.