Continual Conversation with a Silent Man
Continual Conversation with a Silent Man - meaning Summary
Nature, Will, and Objects
Stevens imagines a dialogue not of words but of objects and forces. Everyday images—a brown hen, a blue sky, a broken cartwheel—stand in for human concerns about will, unity, and meaning. The poem treats perception as a kind of “conversation” with a silent other, where motion and sound of things convey a collective will and multiple meanings collapsing into a single relation between farm life and larger, tempestuous forces.
Read Complete AnalysesThe old brown hen and the old blue sky, Between the two we live and die-- The broken cartwheel on the hill. As if, in the presence of the sea, We dried our nets and mended sail And talked of never-ending things, Of the never-ending storm of will, One will and many wills, and the wind, Of many meanings in the leaves, Brought down to one below the eaves, Link, of that tempest, to the farm, The chain of the turquoise hen and sky And the wheel that broke as the cart went by. It is not a voice that is under the eaves. It is not speech, the sound we hear In this conversation, but the sound Of things and their motion: the other man, A turquoise monster moving round.
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