I thought, on the train, how utterly we have forsaken the Earth, in the sense
of excluding it from our thoughts. There are but few who consider its physical
hugeness, its rough enormity. It is still a disparate monstrosity, full of solitudes
& barrens & wilds. It still dwarfs & terrifies & crushes. The rivers still roar,
the mountains still crash, the winds still shatter. Man is an affair of cities. His gardens & orchards & fields are mere scrapings. Somehow, however, he has managed to shut out the face of the giant from his windows. But the giant is
there, nevertheless. And it is a proper question, whether or not the Lilliputians
have tied him down. There are his huge legs, Africa & South America, still,
apparently, free; and the rest of him is pretty tough and unhandy. But, as I
say, we do not think of this. There was a girl on the train with a face like the
under-side of a moonfish. Her talk was of dances and men. For her, Sahara had no sand; Brazil, no mud.
– a journal entry from Wallace Stevens, 20 June 1899
drunken library 