Wallace Stevens: The Irish Cliffs of Moher

Who is my father in this world, in this house,
At the spirit’s base?

My father’s father, his father’s father, his—
Shadows like winds

Go back to a parent before thought, before speech,
At the head of the past.

They go to the cliffs of Moher rising out of the mist,
Above the real,

Rising out of present time and place, above
The wet, green grass.

This is not landscape, full of the somnambulations
Of poetry

And the sea. This is my father or, maybe,
It is as he was,

A likeness, one of the race of fathers: earth
And sea and air.

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Wallace Stevens (Reading, Pennsylvania, United States, 1879 - Hartford, Connecticut, United States, 1955), [The Rock, 1954], The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, Vintage Books, Nueva York, 1990

Photo: http://www.theoperatingsystem.org/5th-annual-napomo-303030-day-9-sam-selinger-on-wallace-stevens/