By the fire at night, the speaker watches the colors of bushes and fallen leaves seem to move through the room, turning the way leaves turn in wind. That repetition soon pulls in darker forces: the “heavy hemlocks,” the remembered peacocks and their cries, the flames, the planets outside, and finally night itself. Everything appears to be turning, gathering, or striding toward him, as if one force—blackness, or the coming dark—is overtaking the scene. The speaker cannot say what the peacocks’ cry protests: the twilight, the leaves, the fire, or the hemlocks. The uncertainty is itself unsettling. A quiet unease builds into fear as night arrives striding, and Stevens leaves the reader inside that haunting, hypnotic mood rather than resolving it.
Domination of Black — Summary
At night, by the fire, The colors of the bushes And of the fallen leaves, Repeating themselves, Turned in the room, Like the leaves themselves Turning in the wind. Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks Came striding. And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.
The colors of their tails Were like the leaves themselves Turning in the wind, In the twilight wind. They swept over the room, Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks Down to the ground. I heard them cry--the peacocks. Was it a cry against the twilight Or against the leaves themselves Turning in the wind, Turning as the flames Turned in the fire, Turning as the tails of the peacocks Turned in the loud fire, Loud as the hemlocks Full of the cry of the peacocks? Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?
Out of the window, I saw how the planets gathered Like the leaves themselves Turning in the wind. I saw how the night came, Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks. I felt afraid. And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.