Home ⇒ 📌Marianne Moore ⇒ He "Digesteth Harde Yron"
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 symbol of justice.
This bird watches his chicks with
A maternal concentration-and he’s
Been mothering the eggs
At night six weeks his legs
Their only weapon of defense.
He is swifter than a horse; he has a foot hard
As a hoof; the leopard
Is not more suspicious. How
Could he, prized for plumes and eggs and young
Used even as a riding-beast, respect men
Hiding actor-like in ostrich skins, with the right hand
Making the neck move as if alive
And from a bag the left hand strewing grain, that ostriches
Might be decoyed and killed! Yes, this is he
Whose plume was anciently
The plume of justice; he
Whose comic duckling head on its
Great neck revolves with
When he stands guard,
In S-like foragings as he is
Preening the down on his leaden-skinned back.
The egg piously shown
As Leda’s very own
From which Castor and Pollux hatched,
Was an ostrich-egg. And what could have been more fit
For the Chinese lawn it
Grazed on as a gift to an
Emperor who admired strange birds, than this
One, who builds his mud-made
Nest in dust yet will wade
In lake or sea till only the head shows.
. . . . . . .
Six hundred ostrich-brains served
At one banquet, the ostrich-plume-tipped tent
And desert spear, jewel-
Gorgeous ugly egg-shell
Goblets, eight pairs of ostriches
In harness, dramatize a meaning
Always missed by the externalist.
The power of the visible
Is the invisible; as even where
No tree of freedom grows,
So-called brute courage knows.
Heroism is exhausting, yet
It contradicts a greed that did not wisely spare
The harmless solitaire
Or great auk in its grandeur;
Unsolicitude having swallowed up
All giant birds but an alert gargantuan
Little-winged, magnificently speedy running-bird.
This one remaining rebel
Is the sparrow-camel.
(2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)Related poetry:
- Oonts Wot makes the soldier’s ‘eart to penk, wot makes ‘im to perspire? It isn’t standin’ up to charge nor lyin’ down to fire; But it’s everlastin’ waitin’ on a everlastin’ road For the commissariat camel an’ ‘is commissariat load. O the oont*, O the oont, O the commissariat oont! With ‘is silly neck a-bobbin’ like […]...
- The Long Small Room THE long small room that showed willows in the west Narrowed up to the end the fireplace filled, Although not wide. I liked it. No one guessed What need or accident made them so build. Only the moon, the mouse, and the sparrow peeped In from the ivy round the casement thick. Of all they […]...
- Nest Eggs Birds all the summer day Flutter and quarrel Here in the arbour-like Tent of the laurel. Here in the fork The brown nest is seated; For little blue eggs The mother keeps heated. While we stand watching her Staring like gabies, Safe in each egg are the Bird’s little babies. Soon the frail eggs they […]...
- Why the Jackass Laughs The Boastful Crow and the Laughing Jack Were telling tales of the outer back: “I’ve just been travelling far and wide, At the back of Bourke and the Queensland side; There isn’t a bird in the bush can go As far as me,” said the old black crow. “There isn’t a bird in the bush […]...
- The Stranger The restaurants on hot spring evenings Lie under a dense and savage air. Foul drafts and hoots from dunken revelers Contaminate the thoroughfare. Above the dusty lanes of suburbia Above the tedium of bungalows A pretzel sign begilds a bakery And children screech fortissimo. And every evening beyond the barriers Gentlemen of practiced wit and […]...
- "Shouting" for a Camel It was over at Coolgardie that a mining speculator, Who was going down the township just to make a bit o’ chink, Went off to hire a camel from a camel propagator, And the Afghan said he’d lend it if he’d stand the beast a drink. Yes, the only price he asked him was to […]...
- Bird Nesting O wonderful! In sport we climbed the tree, Eager and laughing, as in all our play, To see the eggs where, in the nest, they lay, But silent fell before the mystery. For, one brief moment there, we understood By sudden sympathy too fine for words That we were sisters to the brooding birds And […]...
- Foreign Children Little Indian, Sioux, or Crow, Little frosty Eskimo, Little Turk or Japanee, Oh! don’t you wish that you were me? You have seen the scarlet trees And the lions over seas; You have eaten ostrich eggs, And turned the turtle off their legs. Such a life is very fine, But it’s not so nice as […]...
- Weird-Bird Birds are flyin’ south for winter. Here’s the Weird-Bird headin’ north, Wings a-flappin’, beak a-chatterin’, Cold head bobbin’ back ‘n’ forth. He says, “It’s not that I like ice Or freezin’ winds and snowy ground. It’s just sometimes it’s kind of nice To be the only bird in town.”...
- The Price of Peace Peace without Justice is a low estate, A coward cringing to an iron Fate! But Peace through Justice is the great ideal, We’ll pay the price of war to make it real....
- In Childhood things don’t die or remain damaged But return: stumps grow back hands, A head reconnects to a neck, A whole corpse rises blushing and newly elastic. Later this vision is not True: The grandmother remains dead Not hibernating in a wolf’s belly. Or the blue parakeet does not return From the little grave in the […]...
- My Favoured Fare Some poets sing of scenery; Some to fair maids make sonnets sweet. A fig for love and greenery, Be mine a song of things to eat. Let brother bards divinely dream, I’m just plain human, as you see; And choose to carol such a theme As ham and eggs and tea. Just two fried eggs […]...
- My Hundred Books A thousand books my library Contains; And all are primed, it seems to me With brains. Mine are so few I scratch in thought My head; For just a hundred of the lot I’ve read. A hundred books, but of the best, I can With wisdom savour and digest And scan. Yet when afar from […]...
- Time, Real And Imaginary On the wide level of a mountain’s head, (I knew not where, but ’twas some faery place) Their pinions, ostrich-like, for sails out-spread, Two lovely children run an endless race, A sister and a brother! This far outstripp’d the other ; Yet ever runs she with reverted face, And looks and listens for the boy […]...
- Camouflage Beside the bare and beaten track of travelling flocks and herds The woodpecker went tapping on, the postman of the birds, “I’ve got a letter here,” he said, “that no one’s understood, Addressed as follows: ‘To the bird that’s like a piece of wood.’ “The soldier bird got very cross it wasn’t meant for her; […]...
- Warble for Lilac-Time WARBLE me now, for joy of Lilac-time, Sort me, O tongue and lips, for Nature’s sake, and sweet life’s sake-and death’s the same as life’s, Souvenirs of earliest summer-birds’ eggs, and the first berries; Gather the welcome signs, (as children, with pebbles, or stringing shells;) Put in April and May-the hylas croaking in the ponds-the […]...
- The Town Between the Hills The further the little girl leaped and ran, The further she longed to be; The white, white fields of jonquil flowers Danced up as high as her knee And flashed and sparkled before her eyes Until she could hardly see. So into the wood went she. It was quiet in the wood, It was solemn […]...
- Unclean I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert. I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the housetop. Psalm 102 The pelican in scripture is unclean. It pukes dead fish Onto the hatchlings, and it roosts alone, like Satan On the Tree of Life. Nobody told […]...
- Another Day having the low down blues and going Into a restraunt to eat. You sit at a table. The waitress smiles at you. She’s dumpy. her ass is too big. She radiates kindess and symphaty. Live with her 3 months and a man would no real agony. O. k., you’ll tip her 15 percent. You order […]...
- Balbus I’ll tell you the story of Balbus, You know, him as builded a wall; I’ll tell you the reason he built it, And the place where it happened an’ all. This ‘ere Balbus, though only a Tackler, Were the most enterprising of men; He’d heard Chicken Farms were lucrative, So he went out and purchased […]...
- Eugene Carman Rhodes’ slave! Selling shoes and gingham, Flour and bacon, overalls, clothing, all day long For fourteen hours a day for three hundred and thirteen days For more than twenty years. Saying “Yes’m” and “Yes, sir”, and “Thank you” A thousand times a day, and all for fifty dollars a month. Living in this stinking room […]...
- A Cat She had a name among the children; But no one loved though someone owned Her, locked her out of doors at bedtime And had her kittens duly drowned. In Spring, nevertheless, this cat Ate blackbirds, thrushes, nightingales, And birds of bright voice and plume and flight, As well as scraps from neighbours’ pails. I loathed […]...
- Angels They have little use. They are best as objects of torment. No government cares what you do with them. Like birds, and yet so human. . . They mate by briefly looking at the other. Their eggs are like white jellybeans. Sometimes they have been said to inspire a man To do more with his […]...
- Stowaway We’d left the sea-gulls long behind, And we were almost in mid-ocean; The sky was soft and blue and kind, The boat had scarcely any motion; Except that songfully it sped, And sheared the foam swift as an arrow. . . There fluttered down a city sparrow. I stared with something of surprise; The apparition […]...
- God gave a Loaf to every Bird God gave a Loaf to every Bird But just a Crumb to Me I dare not eat it tho’ I starve My poignant luxury To own it touch it Prove the feat that made the Pellet mine Too happy for my Sparrow’s chance For Ampler Coveting It might be Famine all around I could not […]...
- KINDERGARTEN PORTRAIT OF MY MOTHER AT MARDI GRAS She looks rather pathetic, really, Leaning against the black air, The three mangled fingers of her left hand Clutching a yellow purse, Her right arm raised over her head As if to shield herself From the silver shower of stars Raining down upon her. Her mouth is a crack Growing beneath her nose. Two dimples […]...
- From A Letter From Lesbia … So, praise the gods, Catullus is away! And let me tend you this advice, my dear: Take any lover that you will, or may, Except a poet. All of them are queer. It’s just the same – a quarrel or a kiss Is but a tune to play upon his pipe. He’s always hymning […]...
- Love In The Asylum A stranger has come To share my room in the house not right in the head, A girl mad as birds Bolting the night of the door with her arm her plume. Strait in the mazed bed She deludes the heaven-proof house with entering clouds Yet she deludes with walking the nightmarish room, At large […]...
- The Red Shirt “…his poems that no one reads anymore become dust, wind, nothing, Like the insolent colored shirt he bought to die in.” -Vargas Llosa If I gave 5 birds Each 4 eyes I would be blind Unto the 3rd Generation, if I Gave no one a word For a day And let the day Grow into […]...
- Always Unsuitable She wore little teeth of pearls around her neck. They were grinning politely and evenly at me. Unsuitable they smirked. It is true I look a stuffed turkey in a suit. Breasts Too big for the silhouette. She knew At once that we had sex, lots of it As if I had strolled into her […]...
- Lapis Lazuli (For Harry Clifton) I HAVE heard that hysterical women say They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow. Of poets that are always gay, For everybody knows or else should know That if nothing drastic is done Aeroplane and Zeppelin will come out. Pitch like King Billy bomb-balls in Until the town lie beaten flat. […]...
- 129. The Calf RIGHT, sir! your text I’ll prove it true, Tho’ heretics may laugh; For instance, there’s yourself just now, God knows, an unco calf. And should some patron be so kind, As bless you wi’ a kirk, I doubt na, sir but then we’ll find, Ye’re still as great a stirk. But, if the lover’s raptur’d […]...
- The Happy Child I saw this day sweet flowers grow thick But not one like the child did pick. I heard the packhounds in green park But no dog like the child heard bark. I heard this day bird after bird But not one like the child has heard. A hundred butterflies saw I But not one like […]...
- The Lay of a Golden Goose Long ago in a poultry yard One dull November morn, Beneath a motherly soft wing A little goose was born. Who straightway peeped out of the shell To view the world beyond, Longing at once to sally forth And paddle in the pond. “Oh! be not rash,” her father said, A mild Socratic bird; Her […]...
- The Tent Only the stars endome the lonely camp, Only the desert leagues encompass it; Waterless wastes, a wilderness of wit, Embattled Cold, Imagination’s Cramp. Now were the Desolation fain to stamp The congealed Spirit of man into the pit, Save that, unquenchable because unlit, The Love of God burns steady, like a Lamp. It burns! beyond […]...
- The Strangest Creature On Earth You’re like a scorpion, my brother, You live in cowardly darkness like a scorpion. You’re like a sparrow, my brother, Always in a sparrow’s flutter. You’re like a clam, my brother, Closed like a clam, content, And you’re frightening, my brother, like the mouth of an extinct volcano. Not one, not five Unfortunately, you number […]...
- Passer Mortuus Est Death devours all lovely things; Lesbia with her sparrow Shares the darkness,-presently Every bed is narrow. Unremembered as old rain Dries the sheer libation, And the little petulant hand Is an annotation. After all, my erstwhile dear, My no longer cherished, Need we say it was not love, Now that love is perished?...
- Ice Handler I KNOW an ice handler who wears a flannel shirt with Pearl buttons the size of a dollar, And he lugs a hundred-pound hunk into a saloon ice- Box, helps himself to cold ham and rye bread, Tells the bartender it’s hotter than yesterday and will be Hotter yet to-morrow, by Jesus, And is on […]...
- WHO'LL BUY GODS OF LOVE? OF all the beauteous wares Exposed for sale at fairs, None will give more delight Than those that to your sight From distant lands we bring. Oh, hark to what we sing! These beauteous birds behold, They’re brought here to be sold. And first the big one see, So full of roguish glee! With light […]...
- Psalm 75 Power and government from God alone. [Applied to the glorious Revolution by King William, or the happy accession of King George to the throne.] To thee, most Holy and most High, To thee we bring our thankful praise; Thy works declare thy name is nigh, Thy works of wonder and of grace. Britain was doomed […]...