Wittenberg Door

anecdote of the jar

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 of air.

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

- Wallace Stevens