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.
Wallace Stevens, 1954
