THE READER
All night I sat reading a book,
Sat reading as if in a book
Of sombre pages.
It was autumn and falling stars
Covered the shrivelled forms
Crouched in the moonlight.
No lamp was burning as I read,
A voice was mumbling, “Everything
Falls back to coldness,
Even the musky muscadines,
The melons, the vermilion pears
Of the leafless garden.”
The sombre pages bore no print
Except the trace of burning stars
In the frosty heaven.
-Wallace Stevens
Gladsome Lights 
Thank you for sharing this!
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Do you get pretty hoar frosts like this? We rarely do. I admire the frosty garden pictures in my British magazines that I assume come from a different atmosphere than Tennessee’s.
I wonder if the quoted lines inside the poem are from an actual book or other poem? The “musky muscadines” made me think of the muscadine muffins I made recently that were delicious.
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I also wondered that about the phrase, Dewena. Maybe I will try to find out!
I took that picture of a frosty poppy one year when the Iceland poppies in my garden lived up to their name and kept blooming through several freezing weeks before giving up.
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