Anecdote of the Jar

By Wallace Stevens
I placed a jar in Tennessee,   
And round it was, upon a hill.   
It made the slovenly wilderness   
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.   
The jar was round upon the ground   
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.   
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,   
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

Copyright Credit: Wallace Stevens, "Anecdote of the Jar" from Harmonium. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923. Public domain.) 
Source: Poetry (October 1919)