In "Domination of Black" Wallace Stevens tries to show the reader the realization of death. To portray this message Stevens uses "movement from the colors of things to the things themselves [and this is how] the realization of death in the poem is reaches" (Howe, 1978, p.44).
In the first stanza it is night and the speaker is comparing the colors shining into the room that he is in to "the colors of bushes/and the fallen leaves." These colors are "[repeat] themselves," first they are outside, and then they reflect inside for the speaker to see. To add a little suspense to this stanza the speaker notes the dark "color of the heavy hemlocks" as well as remembering "cry of the peacocks." At this point in the poem the reader does not fully understand the "color of the heavy hemlocks," or the "cry of the peacocks," but eventually it will become clear.
In the next stanza, the poem starts to connect to itself. The speaker first talks about the "colors of [the peacocks] tails, they are "like the leaves themselves." They are "turning in the wind" that is being "swept over the room." Once again, the speaker heard "them cry - the peacocks." The question that the reader now faces is: Is the cry of the peacocks being caused by something? According to the speaker the cause could be the leaves, or the "twilight," otherwise seen as darkness. At the end of this stanza "The cry of the peacocks seems to mark, and to be [a] part of, the whole process of [total destruction] exampled by the fire, autumn, [and the] impending darkness" (Sukenick, p. 8). .
Finally, in the last stanza, the speaker is describing the planets as though they were in a pattern the same way as the leaves that had earlier fallen down onto the ground. "I saw how the planets gathered/Like the leaves themselves/Turning in the wind- The speaker then sees "how the night came, /Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks- Now the person in the poem is scared, and realizes that the "stars too seem part of this process of annihilation" (Sukenick, p.
