Wallace Stevens - In a Bad Time lyrics

How mad would he have to be to say, “He beheld An order and thereafter he belonged To it”? He beheld the order of the northern sky. But the beggar gazes on calamity And thereafter he belongs to it, to bread Hard found, and water tasting of misery. For him cold's glacial beauty is his fate. Without understanding, he belongs to it And the night, and midnight, and after, where it is. What has he? What he has he has. But what? It is not a question of captious repartee. What has he that becomes his heart's strong core? He has his poverty and nothing more. His poverty becomes his heart's strong core— A forgetfulness of summer at the pole. Sordid Melpomene, why strut bare boards, Without scenery or lights, in the theatre's bricks, Dressed high in heliotrope's inconstant hue, The muse of misery? Speak loftier lines. Cry out, “I am the purple muse.” Make sure The audience beholds you, not your gown.