Two Figures in Dense Violet Light
Two Figures in Dense Violet Light - context Summary
Florida and Key West
This short lyric places a speaker in dense nocturnal Florida, asking a beloved or the night itself to speak in dusky, suggestive images. The poem blends sensual contact and moonlit landscape—palm trees, buzzards, and the sound of the sea near Key West—to create a mood of intimate, half-heard reverie. Its Hawaiian-sounding but American setting registers Stevens’ recurring use of Florida imagery in Harmonium.
Read Complete AnalysesI had as lief be embraced by the portier of the hotel As to get no more from the moonlight Than your moist hand. Be the voice of the night and Florida in my ear. Use dasky words and dusky images. Darken your speech. Speak, even, as if I did not hear you speaking, But spoke for you perfectly in my thoughts, Conceiving words, As the night conceives the sea-sound in silence, And out of the droning sibilants makes A serenade. Say, puerile, that the buzzards crouch on the ridge-pole and sleep with one eye watching the stars fall Beyond Key West. Say that the palms are clear in the total blue. Are clear and are obscure; that it is night; That the moon shines.
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