Explore "Last Looks at the Lilacs" by Wallace Stevens on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
To what good, in the alleys of the lilacs, / O caliper, do you scratch your buttocks / And tell the divine ingénue, your companion, / That this bloom is the bloom of soap / And this fragrance the fragrance of vegetal?
Do you suppose that she cares a tick, / In this hymeneal air, what it is / That marries her innocence thus, / So that her nakedness is near, / Or that she will pause at scurrilous words?
Poor buffo! Look at the lavender / And look your last and look still steadily, / And say how it comes that you see / Nothing but trash and that you no longer feel / Her body quivering in the Floréal
Toward the cool night and its fantastic star, / Prime paramour and belted paragon, / Well-booted, rugged, arrogantly male, / Patron and imager of the gold Don John, / Who will embrace her before summer comes.