by Wallace Stevens

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.

I made a video for this song The Emperor of Ice-Cream, which is adapted from the Stevens poem.

Some backstory (the hearse at work)

In the parking lot at my day job, an ice cream truck is always parked. And, oddly enough, a hearse visits the office every afternoon to deliver mail. While out to pick up lunch, I kept encountering this hearse driving down the road but with no driver in the driver seat. Surreal, right? Well, the mailwoman is short, and like any good postal worker she delivered mail from the passenger seat. 

About a year ago when I wrote this song I got the image stuck in my mind of a car chase between an ice cream truck and a hearse. The poem the song is based on, by Wallace Stevens, circles around the story of a wake for an old woman and her house filled with what seem like carousers at a party. There's both life and death mixed in throughout. Somehow this image arose.

The garage sale

With this idea in mind, I stumbled into a collection of matchbox cars at a garage sale in my neighborhood. I bashfully asked if he had an ice cream truck. The middle-aged man, clearly the collector, pulled out a 1983 Hot Wheels Good Humor truck, still in its package. My next question about a hearse got raised eyebrows. I had to find it on eBay.

So here it is, The Emperor of Ice-Cream, manifested as a couple of toy cars pulled by strings in whatever race they are running.

The project

This song is part of my project, Radishes and Flowers, a song cycle of folk songs from Wallace Stevens Harmonium.

If you’d like to support this project, you can order a digital or vinyl copy of the full album of Harmonium poems on Bandcamp. It’s up on all the streaming services to listen (including Bandcamp and Soundcloud where it’s free).