The Poem That Took The Place Of A Mountain in  General   

There it was, word for word,
The poem that took the place of a mountain.

He breathed its oxygen,
Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table.

It reminded him how he had needed
A place to go to in his own direction,

How he had recomposed the pines,
Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds,

For the outlook that would be right,
Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion:

The exact rock where his inexactness
Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged,

Where he could lie and, gazing down at the sea,
Recognize his unique and solitary home.

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

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