He has left his robes folded in camphor

And, dressed in black, he walks

Among fireflies.

The bony buttresses, the bony spires

Arranged under the stony clouds

Stand in a fixed light.

The bishop rests.

He is away. The church is gray.

This is his holiday.

The sexton moves with a sexton's stare

In the air.

A dithery gold falls everywhere.

It wets the pigeons,

It goes and the birds go,

Turn dry,

Birds that never fly

Except when the bishop passes by,

Globed in today and tomorrow,

Dressed in his colored robes.

In the poem "Gray Stones and Gray Pigeons" by Wallace Stevens, Stevens creates a community in which religion is extremely important. Stevens is extremely precise in his writing and always uses the right words. He switches figures of speech to make single words have extreme importance. In...