"The Cuban Doctor" is a poem from Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as a lawyer for the Hartford insurance company in Connecticut.His best-known poems include "Anecdote of the Jar",...

's first book of poetry, Harmonium

Harmonium (poetry collection)

Harmonium is a book of poetry by U.S. poet Wallace Stevens. His first book, it was published in 1923 by Knopf in an edition of 1500 copies. He was in middle age at that time, forty-four years old. The collection comprises 85 poems, ranging in length from just a few lines to several hundred...

. It was first published in the journal Poetry in October, 1921, so it is in the public domain.

The Cuban Doctor  I went to Egypt to escape  The Indian, but the Indian struck  Out of his cloud and from his sky.  This was no worm bred in the moon,  Wriggling far down the phantom air,  And on a comfortable sofa dreamed.  The Indian struck and disappeared.  I knew my enemy was near—I,  Drowsing in summer's sleepiest horn.

This 1921 poem meditates on Stevens's increasing awareness, also notably expressed in "The Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks

Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks

"Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium . It was one of the few Harmonium poems first published in that volume, so it is still under copyright...

" (1923), that the difference between imaginative activity and ordinary experience is unstable and affected by irrational forces, which may attack, like a bolt of lightning, even someone "drowsing in summer's sleepiest horn". This theme can be understood as signalling that writing poetry is dangerous. Poetic drowsing is liable to attack by the Indian, or by Berserk in "Peacocks", defeating imagination's task of transforming the ordinary. This sense of danger is absent in such earlier poems as "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock

Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock

"Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1915, and it is in the public domain....

" (1915), where the old sailor need fear no such violence as he catches tigers in red weather.