"Cuisine Burgeoise," by Wallace Stevens

These days of disinheritance, we feast
On human heads. True, birds rebuild
Old nests and there is blue in the woods.
The church bells clap one night in the week.
But that’s all done. It is what it used to be,
As they used to lie in the grass, in the heat,
Men on green beds and women half of the sun.
The words are written though not yet said.

It is like the season when, after summer,
It is summer and it is not, it is autumn
And it is not, it is day and it is not.
As if last night’s lamps continued to burn,
As if yesterday’s people continued to watch
The sky, half porcelain, preferring that
To shaking out heavy bodies in the glares
Of this present, this science, this unrecognized,

This outpost, this douce, this dumb, this dead, in which
We feast on human heads, brought in on leaves,
Crowned with the first, cold buds. On these we live,
No longer on the ancient cake of seed,
The almond and the deep fruit. This bitter meat
Sustains us . . . Who then are they seated here?
Is the table a mirror in which they sit and look?
Are they men eating reflections of themselves?