A light in the darkness

More poetry from Wallace Stevens. And how could Big Frank not include one of his poems that includes the line “what it is”. There is no interaction with “the night”: this is what it is. However, what you can “interchange” with is your love. This poem shows how lovers enfolded in unknowable darkness can through their love “in the pale light that each upon the other throws”, enlighten each other through their romance. Stevens shows how through self-knowledge one can perceive the other. While each is alone, in the background of night, through self-knowledge, through true commitment to each other, and through their interchange -enlightenment can come.

Re-statement of Romance
By Wallace Stevens

The night knows nothing of the chants of night.
It is what it is as I am what I am;
And in perceiving this I best perceive myself

And you. Only we two may interchange
Each in the other what each has to give.
Only we two are one, not you and night,

Nor night and I, but you and I, alone,
So much alone, so deeply by ourselves,
So far beyond the casual solitudes,

That night is only the background of our selves,
Supremely true each to its separate self,
In the pale light that each upon the other throws.