Marianne Moore
The Past is the Present
If external action is effete And rhyme is outmoded, I shall revert to you, Habakkuk, as when in a Bible class The teacher was speaking of unrhymed verse. He said – and I think
He Made This Screen
not of silver nor of coral, But of weatherbeaten laurel. Here, he introduced a sea Uniform like tapestry; Here, a fig-tree; there, a face; There, a dragon circling space Designating here, a bower; There,
A Grave
Man looking into the sea, Taking the view from those who have as much right to it as you have to it yourself, It is human nature to stand in the middle of a
No Swan So Fine
“No water so still as the Dead fountains of Versailles.” No swan, With swart blind look askance And gondoliering legs, so fine As the chinz china one with fawn- Brown eyes and toothed gold
He "Digesteth Harde Yron"
Although the aepyornis Or roc that lived in Madagascar, and The moa are extinct, The camel-sparrow, linked With them in size the large sparrow Xenophon saw walking by a stream was and is A
Spenser's Ireland
has not altered; A place as kind as it is green, The greenest place I’ve never seen. Every name is a tune. Denunciations do not affect The culprit; nor blows, but it Is torture
Nevertheless
you’ve seen a strawberry That’s had a struggle; yet Was, where the fragments met, A hedgehog or a star- Fish for the multitude Of seeds. What better food Than apple seeds – the fruit
Silence
My father used to say, “Superior people never make long visits, Have to be shown Longfellow’s grave Nor the glass flowers at Harvard. Self reliant like the cat That takes its prey to privacy,
The Fish
wade Through black jade. Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps adjusting the ash-heaps; opening and shutting itself like An Injured fan. The barnacles which encrust the side of the wave, cannot hide there for
Baseball and Writing
Fanaticism? No. Writing is exciting And baseball is like writing. You can never tell with either How it will go Or what you will do; Generating excitement A fever in the victim Pitcher, catcher,
The Paper Nautilus
For authorities whose hopes Are shaped by mercenaries? Writers entrapped by Teatime fame and by Commuters’ comforts? Not for these The paper nautilus Constructs her thin glass shell. Giving her perishable Souvenir of hope,
Rosemary
Beauty and Beauty’s son and rosemary – Venus and Love, her son, to speak plainly – Born of the sea supposedly, At Christmas each, in company, Braids a garland of festivity. Not always rosemary
To a Steam Roller
The illustration Is nothing to you without the application. You lack half wit. You crush all the particles down Into close conformity, and then walk back and forth on them. Sparkling chips of rock
Poetry
I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle. Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it after all, a place for the genuine.
The Steeple-Jack
Dürer would have seen a reason for living in a town like this, with eight stranded whales To look at; with the sweet sea air coming into your house On a fine day, from
The Pangolin
Another armored animal scale lapping scale with spruce-cone regularity until they Form the uninterrupted central tail-row! This near artichoke with head and legs and grit-equipped gizzard, The night miniature artist engineer is, yes, Leonardo
Marriage
This institution, Perhaps one should say enterprise Out of respect for which One says one need not change one’s mind About a thing one has believed in, Requiring public promises Of one’s intention To
Peter
Strong and slippery, Built for the midnight grass-party Confronted by four cats, he sleeps his time away The detached first claw on the foreleg corresponding To the thumb, retracted to its tip; the small