“There was a muddy centre before we breathed.
There was a myth before the myth began,
Venerable and articulate and complete.”

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Be Abstract
Context: p>The clouds preceded us.There was a muddy centre before we breathed.
There was a myth before the myth began,
Venerable and articulate and complete.From this the poem springs: that we live in a place
That is not our own and, much more, not ourselves
And hard it is in spite of blazoned days.</p

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Wallace Stevens 278
American poet 1879–1955

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