Smokin' good ... Cuban musician Compay Segundo enjoys a big cigar at the Por Larranaga cigar factory in Havana. Photograph: Jose Goitia/AP
Day Three of the booksblog's celebration of National Poetry Month and already our seasonal excuses for reproducing favourite pomes are beginning to look a little flimsy. I've chosen Wallace Stevens's Emperor of Ice-Cream on the basis that weather forecasts suggests the coming weekend may be the first this year when the nation begins to lust for frozen confectionery.
I love the way the mirrored rhyme scheme here shifts from a kind of metrical samba in the first verse's recipe for earthly pleasures, to a flat-footed death notice in the second. Stevens can get a bit cartoonish with his metaphysics, but here it seems more or less perfect.
And it must be one of the funkiest titles in 20th century verse.
The Emperor of Ice-Cream
Call the roller of big cigars, The muscular one, and bid him whip In kitchen cups concupiscent curds. Let the wenches dawdle in such dress As they are used to wear, and let the boys Bring flowers in last month's newspapers. Let be be finale of seem. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal, Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet On which she embroidered fantails once And spread it so as to cover her face. If her horny feet protrude, they come To show how cold she is, and dumb. Let the lamp affix its beam. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
