"The skreat and skritter of evenings gone"

Big Frank has a moon thing going here with Wallace Stevens; in this one it's a "yellow moon". The poem is a sonnet - although a contemporary one. Sonnet comes from the Italian soneto meaning little song. Traditionally it has 14 lines, and there are various permutations of rhyme scheme and other prosodic formulae depending on whether it's one of these main types: Italian, English or Spenserian. Often it has a turn from a problem presented to a solution, or some other type of turn in mood or tone. The turn was often at line eight or line ten - here look for it right in the middle of line 7 - signaled by "And yet".

Wallace Stevens wrote this sad song of loss. Big Frank asks that you just read it - and let the words wash over you. The mood, the images, the "skreak and skritter" will imprint in you the feeling. We all know exactly what Stevens is writing about here, because we all know loss. This poem captures it by striking that key note that resonates in your soul. It's all about what is gone - and what remains? The yellow moon, and the skreat and skritter overwhelming the unknown - never-to-be-heard sound of the nightingale.

Autumn Refrain
By Wallace Stevens

The skreak and skritter of evenings gone
And grackles gone and sorrows of the sun,
The sorrows of sun, too, gone... the moon and moon,
The yellow moon of words about the nightingale
In measureless measures, not a bird for me
But the name of a bird and the name of a nameless air
I have never——shall never hear. And yet beneath
The stillness of everything gone, and being still,
Being and sitting still, something resides,
Some skreaking and skrittering residuum,
That grates these evasions of the nightingale
Though I have never——shall never hear that bird.
And the stillness is in the key, all of it is,
The stillness is all in the key of that desolate sound.