Wallace Stevens: The Well Dressed Man with a Beard

.

Farmland along the upper Delaware River in New York state: photo by John Collier, June 1943

After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.
No was the night. Yes is this present sun.
If the rejected things, the things denied,
Slid over the western cataract, yet one,
One only, one thing that was firm, even
No greater than a cricket's horn, no more
Than a thought to be rehearsed all day, a speech
Of the self that must sustain itself on speech,
One thing remaining, infallible, would be
Enough. Ah! douce campagna of that thing!
Ah! douce campagna, honey in the heart,
Green in the body, out of a petty phrase,
Out of a thing believed, a thing affirmed:
The form on the pillow humming while one sleeps,
The aureole above the humming house . . .

It can never be satisfied, the mind, never.

Farmland along the upper Delaware River in New York state: photo by John Collier, June 1943

Wallace Stevens: The Well Dressed Man With a Beard, from Parts of a World, 1942

Photos by John Collier from Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress