Surely any nickel cover
is unwelcome.
Making roundness and
finding a place to put it
will be easy jobs.

Fine card board
provides a violent kind
of delightfulness,

and change makes
a fancy present
under the bed.

Not a round thing,
the band
must be taken
out of the way, and,
excuse me,
that is not the mustard.

The same question,
scattered and scattering,
cannot make
more hurt than that,
causes an extra loud clash
and provides an extra small sack,
requires adventure and
courage and a clock.

This system
has a lily white feeling
which exhausts noise and distance
with no extreme grace,

not any substance
made reasonable.

Some outward recognition
shows its
singular arrangement
on the table.

A difference makes corners,
doubles the occasion
for plates.
A resource in a buying incident
allows that there is no middle
in summer,
distinguishes the arrangement,
after the severest and most preserved complaining,
makes anything suitable.

No longer well housed,
practical and patient and staring
like that.
No more long, sudden rooms.
What was the use
of handsome and right
in the way we
displayed them?

Nothing and just
so much more,
and more was
almost enough,
shining very colored
with round colors.


[Liminal selection of phrases from the writings of Gertrude Stein.
Revised for grammatical coherence.]

Discovering Roundness or The Aristocrat's Sunset



hugh tribbey