Another Weeping Woman

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"Another Weeping Woman" is a poem in Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium.

Another Weeping Woman   Pour the unhappiness out   From your too bitter heart,   Which grieving will not sweeten.   Poison grows in this dark.   It is in the water of tears   Its black blooms rise.   The magnificent cause of being,   The imagination, the one reality   In this imagined world   Leaves you   With him for whom no phantasy moves,   And you are pierced by a death.

This poem tells of a woman who is grieving for someone who has died. The triumvirate of imagination, world, and reality is at work. Reality then has its special Stevensian meaning as the world's "being", its vivification and articulation by the imagination. Grieving's "black blooms" occlude her imagination, leaving her in a similar state to the deceased "for whom no phantasy moves". Thus is she poisoned. The poem may be compared to "The Snow Man" and "The Emperor of Ice Cream".