The Planet On The Table in  General   

Ariel was glad he had written his poems.
They were of a remembered time
Or of something seen that he liked.

Other makings of the sun
Were waste and welter
And the ripe shrub writhed.

His self and the sun were one
And his poems, although makings of his self,
Were no less makings of the sun.

It was not important that they survive.
What mattered was that they should bear
Some lineament or character,

Some affluence, if only half-perceived,
In the poverty of their words,
Of the planet of which they were part.

By Wallace Stevens

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Other poems by Wallace Stevens:

• A High-Toned Old Christian Woman
• A Postcard From The Volcano
• A Rabbit As King Of The Ghosts
• Anecdote Of The Jar
• Bantams In Pine-Woods
• Continual Conversation With A Silent Man
• Domination Of Black
• Final Soliloquy Of The Interior Paramour
• Gray Room
• Looking Across The Fields And Watching The Birds F
• Metaphors Of A Magnifico
• Nomad Exquisite
• Not Ideas About The Thing But The Thing Itself
• Of Modern Poetry
• Peter Quince At The Clavier
• Poem Written At Morning
• Six Significant Landscapes
• Sunday Morning
• Tattoo
• The Emperor Of Ice-Cream
• The House Was Quiet And The World Was Calm
• The Idea Of Order At Key West
• The Planet On The Table
• The Poem That Took The Place Of A Mountain
• The River Of Rivers In Connecticut
• The Sense Of The Sleight-Of-Hand Man
• The Snow Man
• The Well Dressed Man With A Beard
• Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird
• To The One Of Fictive Music
• Valley Candle