"the more we would deny that aspect of life, the more it asserts itself"

"A High-Toned Old Christian Woman" by Wallace Stevens

Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.

Take the moral law and make a nave of it

And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus,

The conscience is converted into palms,

Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.

We agree in principle. That's clear. But take

The opposing law and make a peristyle,

And from the peristyle project a masque 

Beyond the planets. Thus, our bawiness, 

Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last,

Is equally converted into palms,

Squiggling like saxophones. And palm for palm,

Madame, we are where we began. Allow,

Therefore, that in the planetary scene

Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed,

Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade,

Proud of such novelties of the sublime,

Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk,

May, merely may, madame, whip from themselves

A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres.

This will make widows wince. But fictive things

Wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince.