I’ve been reading Wallace Stevens – one of the greatest poets, in my opinion. He has a poem called “Description Without Place” – it’s quite long – and there’s a part about Nietzsche and Lenin that fascinates me. Here is a frequently quoted part about Lenin:
Lenin on a bench beside a lake disturbed
The swans. He was not the man for swans.The slouch of his body and his look were not
In suavest keeping. The shoes, the clothes, the hatSuited the decadence of those silences,
In which he sat. All chariots were drowned. The swansMoved on the buried water where they lay.
Lenin took bread from his pocket, scattered it–The swans fled outward to remoter reaches,
As if they knew of distant beaches; and wereDissolved. The distances of space and time
Were one and swans far off were swans to come.The eye of Lenin kept the far-off shapes.
His mind raised up, down-drowned, the chariots.And reaches, beaches, tomorrow’s regions became
One thinking of apocalyptic legions.
So what are the swans? Utopian dreams? Revolution?
