Jump to content

Harmonium (Stevens)/Floral Decorations for Bananas

From Wikisource
4373395Harmonium — Floral Decorations for BananasWallace Stevens

Floral Decorations for Bananas

Well, nuncle, this plainly won't do.These insolent, linear peelsAnd sullen, hurricane shapesWon't do with your eglantine.They require something serpentine.Blunt yellow in such a room!
You should have had plums tonight,In an eighteenth-century dish,And pettifogging buds,For the women of primrose and purl,Each one in her decent curl.Good God! What a precious light!
But bananas hacked and hunched . . .The table was set by an ogre,His eye on an outdoor gloomAnd a stiff and noxious place.Pile the bananas on planks.The women will be all shanksAnd bangles and slatted eyes.
And deck the bananas in leavesPlucked from the Carib trees,Fibrous and dangling down, Oozing cantankerous gumOut of their purple maws,Darting out of their purple crawsTheir musky and tingling tongues.