Of Mere Being
Of Mere Being Lyrics
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze decor,
A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.
You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.
The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down.
About
“Of Mere Being” represents the final installment of Wallace Stevens poetic life. The ever philosophical poet often used his writings to muse upon the questions of being, self exploration, and the limits to human rationality. What does it mean to find the edge of the mind? How can we comprehend the incomprehensible? If we can find the demarcation of our conscious understanding, what lays on the other side? “Of Mere Being” exists as the closest Stevens came to answering these perennial existential and often nihilistic questions.
Stevens deploys the familiar “golden-feathered bird” metaphor as a device to examine the importance of symbol and implied meaning against simply existing, and merely being. His use of line enjambment suggests a running dialogue of the endless discussions involved with understanding that which is impossible to understand. Wallace Stevens lays against the palm at the end of the mind, and waits for the existential tide to come at his feet.
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