Poetry Blogging: Bonus Valentine's Day edition

If any holiday can be considered poetry-friendly, surely Valentine's Day is it. In this spirit we are directed (via the indispensable Bookslut) to Robert Pinsky's Little Anthology of Love Poems, currently in Slate magazine. Pinsky is a former Poet Laureate and one of my favorite contemporary poets, and, as one might expect, he has a rich and varied taste in love poetry. Among the several treasures featured in his article is this poem by Wallace Stevens, which I'd never read before and is now a favorite:

FINAL SOLILOQUY OF THE INTERIOR PARAMOUR

Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one . . .
How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.

Happy Valentine's Day!