honey in the heart: wallace Stevens poem

I first wrote this on Christmas Day, 2007. It looks like I was happy. I am resharing it to share this beautiful Wallace Stevens poem. One of the many things that has fascinated me since moving to CA eight years ago is there are many CA artists I did not hear about growing up and being educated in the Midwest. Chicago is as cosmopolitican as any world class city but its educational system, including the very good undergraduate university I attended, seemed to ignore the West Coast.

I lived in Massachusetts a couple years and I did not have a similar experience. I knew about most East Coast artists from my basic education and avid reading and study of art. I had never heard of Wallace Stevens until I moved here. this is a lovely poem. Enjoy it. I have not changed my Xmas Day 2007 post, only added these paragraphs on top.

It is Christmas and I am happy.

Wow.

It is a bright sunny day in Northern California and inside me. I feel golden, mellow and smooth.

Honey in the heart.*

*This is a line from 'The Well-Dressed Man" by the poet Wallace Stevens. Here is the whole poem, a good one.

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.


Yes is this present sun.  I wish I were a poet or a poetry professor or just a little bit more wonderful than I am.

If Stevens gets it right and the mind can never be satisfied, and I guess I agree with him, what about the heart, can the heart ever be?  I think yes.