The impossibility of Now (pt. III): A few lines by Wallace Stevens

A Clear Day and No Memories

No soldiers in the scenery,
No thoughts of people now dead,
As they were fifty years ago,
Young and living in the air,
Young and walking in the sunshine,
Bending the blue dresses to touch something,
Today the mind is no part of the weather.

Today the air is clear of everything.
It has no knowledge except of nothingness
And it flows over us with no meanings,
As if none of us had ever been here before
And are not now: in this shallow spectacle
This invisible activity, this sense.

Wallace Stevens, *1879 †1955 — When writing part I and part II of what was about to become this trilogy, this poem literally fell into my lap and formed the natural and final third part; a kind of Contrapunctus to what I tried to convey in poor words. I want to share it here.

Dieser Beitrag ist auf Englisch, doch einiges an der Zeitmauer gibt es auch in der hervorragenden Kultur- und Verwaltungssprache Deutsch zu lesen.