Poems by Marianne Moore

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An Octopus

of ice. Deceptively reserved and flat,

it lies "in grandeur and in mass"

beneath a sea of shifting snow-dunes;

dots of cyclamen-red and maroon on its clearly defined

pseudo-podia

made of glass that will bend–a much needed invention–

comprising twenty-eight ice-fields from fifty to five hundred

feet thick,

129

Marianne Moore

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

within the fruit - locked in

123

Marianne Moore

His Shield

The pin-swin or spine-swine

(the edgehog miscalled hedgehog) with all his edges out,

echidna and echinoderm in distressed-

pin-cushion thorn-fur coats, the spiny pig or porcupine,

the rhino with horned snout–

everything is battle-dressed.

Pig-fur won’t do, I’ll wrap

myself in salamander-skin like Presbyter John.

119

Marianne Moore

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 fulfill a private obligation:

129

Marianne Moore

The Fish

wade

through black jade

Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps

adjusting the ash heaps;

opening and shutting itself like

injured fan.

The barnacles which encrust the side

123

Marianne Moore

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 mouse's limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth —

they sometimes enjoy solitude,

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Marianne Moore

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.

Hands that can grasp, eyes

that can dilate, hair that can rise

if it must, these things are important not because a

152

Marianne Moore

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 -

since the flight to Egypt, blooming indifferently.

With lancelike leaf, green but silver underneath,

173

Marianne Moore

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

196

by Marianne Moore

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 pointed passion-flower.

158

by Marianne Moore

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

are crushed down to the level of the parent block.

Were not 'impersonal judment in aesthetic

matters, a metaphysical impossibility,' you

222

by Marianne Moore

To an Intra-mural Rat

You make me think of many men

Once met, to be forgot again

Or merely resurrected

In a parenthesis of wit

That found them hastening through it

Too brisk to be inspected.

Composition date is unknown - the above date represents the first publication date.The lyrical form of this poem is aabccb.

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by Marianne Moore