A few things for themselves,
Convolvulus and coral,
Buzzards and live-moss,
Tiestas from the keys,
A few things for themselves,
Florida, venereal soil,
Disclose to the lover.
The dreadful sundry of this
world,
The Cuban, Polodowsky,
The Mexican women,
The negro undertaker
Killing the time between corpses
Fishing for crayfish...
Virgin of boorish births,
Swiftly in the nights,
In the porches of Key West,
Behind the bougainvilleas,
After the guitar is asleep,
Lasciviously as the wind,
You come tormenting,
Insatiable,
When you might sit,
A scholar of darkness,
Sequestered over the sea,
Wearing a clear tiara
Of red and blue and red,
Sparkling, solitary, still,
In the high sea-shadow.
Donna, donna, dark,
Stooping in indigo gown
And cloudy constellations,
Conceal yourself or disclose
Fewest things to the lover --
A hand that bears a thick-leaved
fruit,
A pungent bloom against your
shade.
One of the points made about the last poem, “A High-Toned Old Christian Woman,” was the uncompromising nature of the muse.
Here you see it dramatized in the effect it has on a hapless man, who is
powerless before her as he would not be before the most alluring lover.
“A few things for themselves … disclose to the lover”
speaks to the mystery at the heart of love, the tendency at least in males to chase
down the elusive prey by searching in small objects associated with the beloved
for clues as to her true nature, and more importantly her true feelings. Such
seemingly inconsequential things as jewelry worn, her favorite animal, or even
the bicycles on the street she lived on can “disclose” no less than a wink, an
unexpected touch or a rich laugh, the feelings of the beloved, and in so doing
bring her closer.
When the imagined lover, as here, is hidden within the
entire Sunshine State, these clues range wildly, from sensual in form of convolvulus,
an invasive yet beautiful genus of weed with its word sound shockingly like
“vulva,” and coral, whose pink color is associated with both Venus and the
female body, to life-affirming (“live-moss”) to rife – as South Florida is – with decay, in the form of buzzards who feed on putrefying flesh and undertakers so inured to death they
pass the time fishing. She sends, in other words, “mixed signals” that are too
various and “sundry” to reveal anything but the “things in themselves.” This “dreadful”
conclusion culminates in the speaker calling the beloved a “virgin of boorish
births,” which notes the disparity between the feminine ideal and the banal
children that come out of her – the gap between the ideal Beatrice and her
reality. There is only the barest hint of her presence, in the form of tiestas,
the local headwinds that come from the South.
All that changes at night. “Swiftly … after the guitar is
asleep, lasciviously” she not only appears, but is “tormenting, insatiable.” This
vivid – and highly charged – personification of nighttime Florida as the most
disruptive of lovers “discloses” the extraordinary effect of unfamiliar beauty on
one sensitive enough to its effect, specifically the way it seems to speak from
beyond human terms. It also suggests the “insatiable” beautiful object herself
wants communication as well, that it is two way.
There is some discomfort, however, in the natural world
interacting with that of the human. The next stanza presents an alternative,
one presumably preferable for the Goddess of harmony and order, to “sit, / A
scholar of darkness, / Sequestered over the sea.” She should, in other words, remain
distant from humans, and carry on whatever existence she has without disturbing
her or our isolation. The humans can make metaphors as they will of her unknowable
appearance, describing the windswept colors as a “clear tiara” and imagining
her as so engulfed by the sea that she sparkles. Despite this attempt at
rhetorical distancing, red is mentioned here twice, as if the straight reporting
of the color cannot help but merge into a more sensual desire.
Thus unsatisfied, the speaker turns to address her
directly, as “Donna, donna, dark,” using the Italian honorific for “lady.” He
begs her to “conceal” herself or “disclose fewest things to the lover,” as if
he needs her modesty for the sake of his own too-powerful desires. This is
despite her already wearing an “indigo gown,” the most hidden garb imaginable,
and “stooping in … cloudy constellation,” already well-concealed among the
stars. The point is clearly that even the barest hints of poetry in the natural
world are too much for his amours.
Instead he asks, ironically, for something more tangible,
a physical hand to display the fruits of her exotic sphere of earth, and a
scent to remember her, a “pungent bloom” set off against her “shade,” which
could be her shadowy presence or her ghostly absence. He wants more, that is to
say, less. It is a poet’s cry for normalcy, to stop the urgent voice from
beyond the physical world. She clearly seems “real” to him, but she can only be
“imagined” in the non-poetic/prosaic world where most humans – including, it
seems, our speaker – live.
Despite the man’s noble intention to shoo the mistress away,
the poem makes the contrary case that he is terminally smitten and will not,
like so many before him, be able to live again in the place that existed before
she started pining for him. It will take many years for Stevens to finally say
farewell to Florida.
