"Explanation" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium (1923). It was first published in 1917, so it is in the public domain.Buttel, p. 162. See also Librivox and the Poetry web site.
Interpretation Robert Buttel has indicated this poem may be an explanation of the difference between conventional decoration and artistic imagination, the latter represented, as Buttel proposes, by an allusion to Chagall and the otherworldly charm (a figure drifting through space) of his paintings.Buttel, p. 162
Notes
References
Buttel, Robert. Wallace Stevens: The Making of Harmonium. 1967: Princeton University Press.