Esteemed Spouse is at Beauty and the Beast with some friends; I am at home with the dog.
I quite enjoy occasional solitude. In an empty house no-one will raise their eyebrows when I start reading aloud. And poetry, as we all know, must be read aloud.
My book tonight is Domestic Interiors by Fiona Wright. I've heard her speak a few times, so I read silently first, imagining her voice, then read aloud in my own creaking whisper. Such luxury.
The poem below is not by Wright, but describes my evening perfectly.
Wallace Stevens
The House Was Quiet
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,
Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom
The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.
The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.
And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself
Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.
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