"Gubbinal" 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 is in the public domain according to Librivox.

It can be read as one of his "poems of epistemology", as B. J. Leggett styles it in his Nietzschean reading of Stevens' perspectivism, a minimalistic statement of his interest in the relationship between imagination and the world. The term 'gubbinal' may derive from 'gubbin', slang for a dullard, referring here to someone who takes the world to be ugly and the people sad.

Gubbinal  That strange flower, the sun,  Is just what you say.  Have it your way.  The world is ugly,  And the people are sad.  That tuft of jungle feathers,  That animal eye,  Is just what you say.  That savage of fire,  That seed,  Have it your way.  The world is ugly,  And the people are sad.

Perspectives or 'takes' on the world may be less or more insightful, ranging from 'the world is ugly' to a poetic take on the sun. Stevens has been understood as an idealist, denying the existence of a (mind-independent) external world, but that is not necessary. Apart from perspectives, there is nothing to say about the world. Saying introduces a perspective. That much can be gleaned from The Snow Man

The Snow Man

"The Snow Man" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. "The Snow Man" was first published in 1921 in the journal Poetry, volume 19, October 1921 and is in the public domain.-Overview:...

, which begins with beautiful perspectives ("Junipers shagged with ice," etc.) and ends with a dramatic last line, stripping the perspectives down to nothing as the self loses its capacity to project itself onto the world. Neither "Gubbinal" nor "The Snow Man" means that the external world is an illusion, or a figment of imagination. They are testifying rather to the creative power of imagination.
The poem says "Have it your way", but it shows poetic possibilities that defy the banal perspectives.