CONNOISSEUR OF CHAOS

I

A. A violent order is a disorder; and

B. A great disorder is an order. These

Two things are one. (Pages of illustrations.)

II

If all the green of spring was blue, and it is;

If the flowers of South Africa were bright

On the tables of Connecticut, and they are;

If Englishmen lived without tea in Ceylon, and

They do

And if it all went on in an orderly way,

And it does; a law of inherent opposites,

Of essential unity, is as pleasant as port,

As pleasant as the brush-strokes of a bough,

An upper, particular bough in, say, Marchand.

III

After all the pretty contrast of life and death

Proves that these opposite things partake of one,

At least that was the theory, when bishops’ books

Resolved the world. We cannot go back to that.

The squirming facts exceed the squamous mind,

If one may say so. And yet relation appears,

A small relation expanding like the shade

Of a cloud on sand, a shape on the side of a hill.

IV

A. Well, an old order is a violent one.

This proves nothing. Just one more truth, one more

Element in the immense disorder of truths.

B. It is April as I write. The wind

Is blowing after days of constant rain.

All this, of course, will come to summer soon.

But suppose the disorder of truths should ever come

To an order, most Plantagenet, most fixed …

A great disorder is an order. Now, A

And B are not like statuary, posed

For a vista in the Louvre. They are things chalked

On the sidewalk so that the pensive man may see.

V

The pensive man … He sees that eagle float

For which the intricate Alps are a single nest.

Wallace Stevens: Parts of a world