Wallace Stevens - A High-Toned Old Christian Woman lyrics

Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven thus
The conscience is converted into palms
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns
We agree in principle that's clear but take
The opposing law and make a peristyle
And from the peristyle project a masque
Beyond the planets thus, our bawdiness
Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last
Is equally converted into palms
Squiggling like saxophones and palm for palm
Madame, we are where we began allow
Therefore, that in the planetary scene
Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed
Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade
Proud of such novelties of the sublime
Such tink and tank and tunk-a tunk tunk
May, merely may, madame, whip from themselves
A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres
This will make widows wince
But fictive things
Wink as they will wink most when widows wince