The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm

Marcel Rieder

The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,

Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be

The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.

The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:

The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,

In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself

Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

Wallace Stevens

There are moments like this, when everything seems to flow together. When the book and the night and the house and reader are like one, joined and flowing together as if in one truth, one state of being, one current. It's rare, but I wonder if that's only because I haven't been aware. Maybe it's always there, deep down. Isn't there a deep inner harmony to all things? Perhaps this "truth in a calm world" is the place I need to live from.