Where you yourself were never quite yourself and did not want nor have to be

You like it under the trees in autumn,
Because everything is half dead.
The wind moves like a cripple among the leaves
And repeats words without meaning.

In the same way, you were happy in spring
With the half colors of quarter-things
The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds,
The single bird, the obscure moon—

The obscure moon lighting an obscure world
Of things that would never be quite expressed
Where you yourself were never quite yourself
And did not want nor have to be,

Desiring the exhilarations of changes
The motive for metaphor, shrinking from
The weight of primary noon,
The A B C of being,

The ruddy temper, the hammer
Of red and blue, the hard sound
Steel against intimation—the sharp flash,
The vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X

– The Motive for Metaphor, by Wallace Stevens