Wallace Stevens: "The Reader"

I may have mentioned this before, but I will say it again:  Wallace Stevens is an acquired taste, at least that's how I see him.  I can't say he's one of my favorite poets, but every so often I have to browse through my copy of a collection of  his poems,  The Pa/m at the End of the Mind.  So far most of his poems puzzle me to the extent I'm not even sure that I'm getting the overt sense of them, much less anything deeper.  But, once in awhile I encounter one of his quirky ones that strikes a chord somewhere.  Here's the most recent example, and it's an autumn poem also:


The Reader

All night I sat reading a book,
Sat reading as if in a book
Of somber 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 somber pages bore no print
Except the trace of burning stars
In the frosty heaven.

-- Wallace Stevens --



                                   "Everything
Falls back to coldness,

Even the musky muscadines,
The melons, the vermilion pears
Of the leafless garden."

 Stevens doesn't seem to be celebrating a rich harvest here, as many autumn poems do.   This is a more somber poem.  He might be contemplating autumn as the prelude to winter and death.