Marianne Moore (1887 – 1972)
Modernist American poet and writer.
Staff and effigy of the animal
which by shedding its skin
is a sign of renewal —
the symbol of medicine.
We Call Them the Brave
who likely were reluctant to be brave.
This is a strange fraternity — these sea lions and land lions,
land unicorns and sea unicorns;
the lion civilly rampant,
tame and concessive like the long-tailed bear of Ecuador —
the lion standing up against this screen of woven air
which is the forest:
the unicorn also, on its hind legs in reciprocity.
The problems is mastered — insupportably
tiring when it was impending.
Deliverance accounts for what sounds like axiom.
Love, ah Love, when your slipknot's drawn,
One can but say, "Farewell, good sense."
What I write could only be called poetry because there is no other category to put it.
that which is impossible to force, it is impossible
to hinder.
Maine should be pleased that its animal
is not a waverer, and rather
than fight, lets the primed quill fall.
Shallow oppressor, intruder,
insister, you have found a resister.
Everything I have written is the result of reading or of interest in people.
Some speak of things we know, as new;
And you, of things unknown as things forgot.
O to be a dragon,
a symbol of the power of Heaven — of silkworm
size or immense; at times invisible.
Felicitous phenomenon!
A writer is unfair to himself when he is unable to be hard on himself.
What is our innocence,
what is our guilt? All are
naked, none is safe.
War is pillage versus resistance and if illusions of magnitude could be transmuted into ideals of magnanimity, peace might be realized.
A symbol from the first, of mastery,
experiments such as Hippocrates made
and substituted for vague
speculation stayed
the ravages of plague.
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.
What of it? We call them brave
perhaps? Yes; what if the time should come
when no one will fight for anything
and there's nothing of worth to save.
We are what we were at birth, and each trait has remained
in conformity with earth's and with heaven's logic:
Be the devil's tool, resort to black magic,
None can diverge from the ends which Heaven foreordained.
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;
not in silence, but restraint.
So wary as to disappear for centuries and reappear
but never caught,
the unicorn has been preserved
by an unmatched device
wrought like the work of expert blacksmiths ...