That Breakfast

     – in memory of Wallace Stevens

His pigeons have reached darkness

By now, and absolute shade,

The one fast color, hardened

The rich change of his blue gaze.

Indelible leaves falling

Across the Sundays, firing

An ice-rimmed sky or blazing

In his page, will hold his sound.

Earth only will find him cold.

How fair must have been that late

And inexorable stand

When, closely groomed, breakfasting

Expensively on warm wine,

Eggs Benedict, he reworked

Some dark juxtaposition,

His gaze led by innocence,

His hands in the moment, all

Malice suspended softly,

And heard in the seventh hour,

Dilating like the sea's prose,

That long formality:  peace.

Moore Moran

© 1956; originally printed in The Atlantic
Monthly.  Reprinted by permission of the
author.