"Explanation" 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...

 (1923). It was first published in 1917, so it is in the public domain.

Explanation  Ach, Mutter,  This old, black dress,  I have been embroidering  French flowers on it.  Not by way of romance,  Here is nothing of the ideal,  Nein,  Nein.  It would have been different,  Liebchen,  If I had imagined myself,  In an orange gown,  Drifting through space,  Like a figure on the church-wall.

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 of his paintings.