Poems by Marianne Moore

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Spenser's Island

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 to him to not be spoken to.

They're natural,—

by 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 I repeat his exact words -

"Hebrew poetry is prose

with a sort of heightened consciousness." Ecstasy affords

by Marianne Moore

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

collar on to show whose bird it was.

Lodged in the Louis Fifteenth

by Marianne Moore

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 thing,

but you cannot stand in the middle of this;

the sea has nothing to give but a well excavated grave.

The firs stand in a procession, each with an emerald turkey-

foot at the top,

by Marianne Moore

Peter

Strong and slippery, built for the midnight grass-party confronted by four cats,

he sleeps his time away — the detached first claw on his foreleg which corresponds

to the thumb, retracted to its tip; the small tuft of fronds

or katydid legs above each eye, still numbering the units in each group;

the shadbones regularly set about his mouth, to droop or rise

in unison like the porcupine's quills — motionless. He lets himself be flat

tened out by gravity, as it were a piece of seaweed tamed and weakened by

exposure to the sun; compelled when extended, to lie

by Marianne Moore

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 water etched

with waves as formal as the scales

on a fish.

One by one in two's and three's, the seagulls keep

flying back and forth over the town clock,

by Marianne Moore

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 da Vinci’s replica–

impressive animal and toiler of whom we seldom hear.

by Marianne Moore

Roses Only

You do not seem to realize that beauty is a liability rather

than

an asset - that in view of the fact that spirit creates form

we are justified in supposing

that you must have brains. For you, a symbol of the

unit, stiff and sharp,

conscious of surpassing by dint of native superiority and

liking for everything

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.

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

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.

by 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

by Marianne Moore