Wallace Stevens - Large Red Man Reading lyrics

There were ghosts that returned to
Earth to hear his phrases
As he sat there reading, aloud
The great blue tabulae
They were those from the wilderness of
Stars that had expected more

There were those that returned to hear him
Read from the poem of life
Of the pans above the stove
The pots on the table, the tulips among them
They were those that would have wept
To step barefoot into reality

That would have wept and been happy
Have shivered in the frost
And cried out to feel it again
Have run fingers over leaves
And against the most coiled thorn
Have seized on what was ugly

And laughed, as he sat there reading
From out of the purple tabulae
The outlines of being and it's expressings
The syllables of it's law:
Poesis, poesis, the literal characters
The vatic lines

Which in those ears and in
Those thin, those spended hearts
Took on color, took on shape and the size
Of things as they are
And spoke the feeling for them
Which was what they had lacked