Burghers of Petty Death
Wallace Stevens
1879 to 1955
These two by the stone wall
Are a slight part of death,
The grass is still green.
But there is a total death,
A devastation, a death of great height
And depth, covering all surfaces,
Filling the mind.
These are the small townsmen of death,
A man and a woman, like two leaves
That keep clinging to a tree,
Before winter freezes and grows black—
Of great height and depth
Without any feeling, an imperium of quiet,
In which a wasted figure, with an instrument,
Propounds blank final music.
Wallace Stevens's Burghers of Petty Death
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