from Variations on a Summer Day
--Wallace Stevens 

II
A music more than a breath, but less
Than the wind, sub-music like sub-speech,
A repetition of unconscious things,
Letters of rock and water, words
Of the visible elements and of ours. 

VII
One sparrow is worth a thousand gulls,
When it sings. The gull sits on chimney-tops.
He mocks the guineas, challenges
The crow, inciting various modes.
The sparrow requites one, without intent.  

VIII
An exercise in viewing the world.
On the motive! But one looks at the sea
As one improvises, on the piano.  

X
To change nature, not merely to change ideas,
To escape from the body, so to feel
Those feelings that the body balks,
The feelings of the natures round us here:
As a boat feels when it cuts blue water.  

XVI
Round and round goes the bell of the water
And round and round goes the water itself
And that which is the pitch of its motion,
The bell of its dome, the patron sound. 

XVIII
Low tide, flat water, sultry sun.
One observes profoundest shadows rolling.
Damariscotta da da doo.