So you’re home again, Redwood Roamer, and ready
To feast . . . Slice the mango, Naaman, and dress it
With white wine, sugar and lime juice. Then bring it,
After we’ve drunk the Moselle, to the thickest shade
Of the garden. We must prepare to hear the Roamer’s
Story . . . The sound of that slick sonata,
Finding its way from the house, makes music seem
To be a nature, a place in which itself
Is that which produces everything else, in which
The Roamer is a voice taller than the redwoods,
Engaged in the most prolific narrative,
A sound producing the things that are spoken.
From Wallace Stevens’s poem “Certain Phenomena of Sound,” from Transport to Summer. The mangos are from Margaret Street.
