Wallace Stevens - Sailing After Lunch lyrics

It is the word pejorative that hurts. My old boat goes round on a crutch And doesn't get under way. It's the time of the year And the time of the day. Perhaps it's the lunch that we had Or the lunch that we should have had. But I am, in any case, A most inappropriate man In a most unpropitious place. Mon Dieu, hear the poet's prayer. The romantic should be here. The romantic should be there. It ought to be everywhere. But the romantic must never remain, Mon Dieu, and must never again return. This heavy historical sail Through the mustiest blue of the lake In a really vertiginous boat Is wholly the vapidest fake. . . . It is least what one ever sees. It is only the way one feels, to say Where my spirit is I am, To say the light wind worries the sail, To say the water is swift today, To expunge all people and be a pupil Of the gorgeous wheel and so to give That slight transcendence to the dirty sail, By light, the way one feels, sharp white, And then rush brightly through the summer air.