“Let be be finale of seem.”
The Emperor of Ice Cream
Wallace Stevens
My life is fine,
not bad, okay.
Yet sadness heaves
heavy.
The surrogate world
oozes
deputized artifice.
The real real is disregarded
What seems is credited reliable.
This is cause enough for grief.
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The Emperor of Ice Cream is a two stanza, sixteen line poem by the American poet and insurance
company executive Wallace Stevens celebrating the rich sensuality of the world even in the face of
impermanence and the passage of time.