Wallace Stevens - In a Bad Time lyrics

How mad would he have to be to say
"He beheld
An order and thereafter he belonged
To it"? He beheld the order
Of the northern sky

But the beggar gazes on calamity
And thereafter he belongs to it, to bread
Hard found, and water tasting of misery

For him cold’s glacial beauty is his fate
Without understanding, he belongs to it
And the night, and midnight, and after
Where it is

What has he? What he has he has but what?
It is not a question of captious repartee
What has he that becomes
His heart’s strong core?

He has his poverty and nothing more
His poverty becomes his heart’s strong core
A forgetfulness of summer at the pole

Sordid Melpomene, why strut bare boards
Without scenery or lights, in
The theatre’s bricks
Dressed high in heliotrope’s inconstant hue

The muse of misery? Speak loftier lines
Cry out, "I am the purple muse" Make sure
The audience beholds you, not your gown