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                                 POEMS

                           BY MARIANNE MOORE


                                LONDON
                           THE EGOIST PRESS
                 _2 Robert Street, Adelphi, W.C._

                                 1921

           _Several of these poems appeared in_ THE EGOIST;
              _others in_ THE DIAL, OTHERS _and_ CONTACT.




                            CONTENTS

    PEDANTIC LITERALIST                                      5
    TO A STEAM ROLLER                                        6
    DILIGENCE IS TO MAGIC AS PROGRESS IS TO FLIGHT           6
    THOSE VARIOUS SCALPELS                                   7
    FEED ME, ALSO, RIVER GOD,                                8
    TO WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS ON TAGORE                        8
    HE MADE THIS SCREEN                                      9
    TALISMAN                                                 9
    BLACK EARTH                                             10
    “HE WROTE THE HISTORY BOOK,” IT SAID                    12
    YOU ARE LIKE THE REALISTIC PRODUCT OF AN IDEALISTIC
        SEARCH FOR GOLD AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW          12
    REINFORCEMENTS                                          13
    ROSES ONLY                                              13
    IN THIS AGE OF HARD TRYING NONCHALANCE IS GOOD, AND     14
    THE FISH                                                14
    MY APISH COUSINS                                        16
    WHEN I BUY PICTURES                                     17
    PICKING AND CHOOSING                                    18
    ENGLAND                                                 19
    DOCK RATS                                               20
    RADICAL                                                 21
    POETRY                                                  22
    IN THE DAYS OF PRISMATIC COLOR                          23
    IS YOUR TOWN NINEVEH?                                   24




POEMS

BY MARIANNE MOORE




PEDANTIC LITERALIST


    Prince Rupert’s drop, paper muslin ghost,
      white torch—“with pow’r to say unkind
        things with kindness, and the most
          irritating things in the midst of love and
            tears,” you invite destruction.

    You are like the meditative man
      with the perfunctory heart; its
        carved cordiality ran
          to and fro at first, like an inlaid and roy’l
            immutable production;

    then afterward “neglected to be
      painful” and “deluded him with
        loitering formality,
          doing its duty as if it did it not,”
            presenting an obstruction

    to the motive that it served. What stood
      erect in you, has withered. A
        little “palm-tree of turned wood”
          informs your once spontaneous core in its
            immutable reduction.




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 judgment in æsthetic
        matters, a metaphysical impossibility,” you

    might fairly achieve
    it. As for butterflies, I can hardly conceive
      of one’s attending upon you, but to question
        the congruence of the complement is vain, if it exists.




DILIGENCE IS TO MAGIC AS PROGRESS IS TO FLIGHT


    With an elephant to ride upon—“with rings on her fingers and bells
        on her toes,” she shall outdistance calamity anywhere she goes.
    Speed is not in her mind inseparable from carpets. Locomotion arose
        in the shape of an elephant, she clambered up and chose
    to travel laboriously. So far as magic carpets are concerned, she
        knows that although the semblance of speed may attach to
        scarecrows
    of æsthetic procedure, the substance of it is embodied in such of
        those tough-grained animals as have outstripped man’s whim to
        suppose
    them ephemera, and have earned that fruit of their ability to endure
        blows, which dubs them prosaic necessities—not curios.




THOSE VARIOUS SCALPELS


    Those
    various sounds consistently indistinct, like intermingled
            echoes
      struck from thin glass successively at random—the
      inflection disguised: your hair, the tails of two
            fighting-cocks head to head in stone—like sculptured
            scimitars re-
          peating the curve of your ears in reverse order: your eyes,
            flowers of ice

    and
    snow sown by tearing winds on the cordage of disabled
            ships: your raised hand
      an ambiguous signature: your cheeks, those rosettes
      of blood on the stone floors of French châteaux, with
            regard to which guides are so affirmative:
          your other hand

    a
    bundle of lances all alike, partly hid by emeralds from
            Persia
      and the fractional magnificence of Florentine
      goldwork—a collection of half a dozen little objects
            made fine
          with enamel in gray, yellow, and dragonfly blue: a lemon, a

    pear
    and three bunches of grapes, tied with silver: your dress, a
            magnificent square
      cathedral of uniform
      and at the same time, diverse appearance—a species of
            vertical vineyard rustling in the storm
          of conventional opinion. Are they weapons or scalpels?
            Whetted

    to
    brilliance by the hard majesty of that sophistication which
            is su-
      perior to opportunity, these things are rich
      instruments with which to experiment but surgery is
            not tentative: why dissect destiny with instruments
            which
          are more highly specialized than the tissues of destiny
            itself?




FEED ME, ALSO, RIVER GOD,


    lest by diminished vitality and abated
    vigilance, I become food for crocodiles—for that quicksand
    of gluttony which is legion. It is there—close at hand—
        on either side
        of me. You remember the Israelites who said in pride

    and stoutness of heart: “The bricks are fallen down, we will
    build with hewn stone, the sycamores are cut down, we will change to
    cedars”? I am not ambitious to dress stones, to renew
        forts, nor to match
        my value in action, against their ability to catch

    up with arrested prosperity. I am not like
    them, indefatigable, but if you are a god you will
    not discriminate against me. Yet—if you may fulfil
        none but prayers dressed
        as gifts in return for your gifts—disregard the request.




TO WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS ON TAGORE


    It is made clear by the phrase,
    even the mood—by virtue of which he says

    the thing he thinks—that it pays,
    to cut gems even in these conscience-less days;

    but the jewel that always
    outshines ordinary jewels, is your praise.




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.




TALISMAN


    Under a splintered mast,
    torn from ship and cast
            near her hull,

    a stumbling shepherd found
    embedded in the ground,
            a sea-gull

    of lapis lazuli,
    a scarab of the sea,
            with wings spread—

    curling its coral feet,
    parting its beak to greet
            men long dead.




BLACK EARTH


    Openly, yes,
    with the naturalness
        of the hippopotamus or the alligator
        when it climbs out on the bank to experience the

    sun, I do these
    things which I do, which please
        no one but myself. Now I breathe and now I am sub-
        merged; the blemishes stand up and shout when the object

    in view was a
    renaissance; shall I say
        the contrary? The sediment of the river which
        encrusts my joints, makes me very gray but I am used

    to it, it may
    remain there; do away
        with it and I am myself done away with, for the
        patina of circumstance can but enrich what was

    there to begin
    with. This elephant skin
        which I inhabit, fibred over like the shell of
        the coco-nut, this piece of black glass through which no light

    can filter—cut
    into checkers by rut
        upon rut of unpreventable experience—
        it is a manual for the peanut-tongued and the

    hairy toed. Black
    but beautiful, my back
        is full of the history of power. Of power? What
        is powerful and what is not? My soul shall never

    be cut into
    by a wooden spear; through-
        out childhood to the present time, the unity of
        life and death has been expressed by the circumference

    described by my
    trunk; nevertheless, I
        perceive feats of strength to be inexplicable after
        all; and I am on my guard; external poise, it

    has its centre
    well nurtured—we know
        where—in pride, but spiritual poise, it has its centre where?
        My ears are sensitized to more than the sound of

    the wind. I see
    and I hear, unlike the
        wandlike body of which one hears so much, which was made
        to see and not to see; to hear and not to hear;

    that tree trunk without
    roots, accustomed to shout
        its own thoughts to itself like a shell, maintained intact
        by who knows what strange pressure of the atmosphere; that

    spiritual
    brother to the coral
        plant, absorbed into which, the equable sapphire light
        becomes a nebulous green. The I of each is to

    the I of each,
    a kind of fretful speech
        which sets a limit on itself; the elephant is?
        Black earth preceded by a tendril? It is to that

    phenomenon
    the above formation,
        translucent like the atmosphere—a cortex merely—
        that on which darts cannot strike decisively the first

    time, a substance
    needful as an instance
        of the indestructibility of matter; it
        has looked at the electricity and at the earth-

    quake and is still
    here; the name means thick. Will
        depth be depth, thick skin be thick, to one who can see no
        beautiful element of unreason under it?




“HE WROTE THE HISTORY BOOK,” IT SAID


    There! You shed a ray
      of whimsicality on a mask of profundity so
      terrific that I have been dumbfounded by
    it oftener than I care to say.
      _The_ book? Titles are chaff.

    Authentically
      brief and full of energy, you contribute to your father’s
      legibility and are sufficiently
    synthetic. Thank you for showing me
      your father’s autograph.




YOU ARE LIKE THE REALISTIC PRODUCT OF AN IDEALISTIC SEARCH FOR GOLD
AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW


    Hid by the august foliage and fruit of the grape vine,
    twine
      your anatomy
        round the pruned and polished stem,
          chameleon.
          Fire laid upon
        an emerald as long as
      the Dark King’s massy
    one,
    could not snap the spectrum up for food as you have done.




REINFORCEMENTS


    The vestibule to experience is not to
        be exalted into epic grandeur. These men are going
    to their work with this idea, advancing like a school of fish
        through

    still water—waiting to change the course or dismiss
        the idea of movement, till forced to. The words of the Greeks
    ring in our ears, but they are vain in comparison with a sight like
        this.

    The pulse of intention does not move so that one
        can see it, and moral machinery is not labelled, but
    the future of time is determined by the power of volition.




ROSES ONLY


    You do not seem to realise 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 self-dependent, anything an

    ambitious civilisation might produce: for you, unaided to attempt
      through sheer reserve, to confute presumptions resulting from
                observation, is idle. You cannot make us
        think you a delightful happen-so. But rose, if you are
      brilliant, it is not because your petals are the
                without-which-nothing of pre-eminence.
                You would look, minus
    thorns—like a what-is-this, a mere

    peculiarity. They are not proof against a worm, the elements, or
      mildew but what about the predatory hand? What is brilliance
                without co-ordination? Guarding the
        infinitesimal pieces of your mind, compelling audience to
      the remark that it is better to be forgotten than to be remembered
                too violently,
    your thorns are the best part of you.




IN THIS AGE OF HARD TRYING NONCHALANCE IS GOOD, AND


    really, it is not the
      business of the gods to bake clay pots. They did not
        do it in this instance. A few
          revolved upon the axes of their worth
      as if excessive popularity might be a pot;

    they did not venture the
      profession of humility. The polished wedge
        that might have split the firmament
          was dumb. At last it threw itself away
      and falling down, conferred on some poor fool, a privilege.

    Taller by the length of
      a conversation of five hundred years than all
        the others, there was one, whose tales
          of what could never have been actual—
      were better than the haggish, uncompanionable drawl

    of certitude; his by-
      play was more terrible in its effectiveness
        than the fiercest frontal attack.
          The staff, the bag, the feigned inconsequence
      of manner, best bespeak that weapon, self protectiveness.




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 the submerged shafts of the

    sun,
    split like spun
      glass, move themselves with spotlike swift-
        ness
        into the crevices—
      in and out, illuminating

    the
    turquoise sea
      of bodies. The water drives a
        wedge
        of iron through the iron edge
      of the cliff, whereupon the stars,

    pink
    rice grains, ink
      bespattered jelly-fish, crabs like
        green
        lilies and submarine
      toadstools, slide each on the other.

    All
    external
      marks of abuse are present on
        this
        defiant edifice—
      all the physical features of

    ac-
    cident—lack
      of cornice, dynamite grooves, burns
        and
        hatchet strokes, these things stand
      out on it; the chasm side is

    dead.
    Repeated
      evidence has proved that it can
        live
        on what cannot revive
      its youth. The sea grows old in it.




MY APISH COUSINS


   winked too much and were afraid of snakes. The zebras, supreme in
   their abnormality; the elephants with their fog-colored skin
     and strictly practical appendages
       were there, the small cats and the parrakeet—
         trivial and humdrum on examination, destroying
       bark and portions of the food it could not eat.

  I recall their magnificence, now not more magnificent
   than it is dim. It is difficult to recall the ornament,
     speech, and precise manner of what one might
       call the minor acquaintances twenty
         years back; but I shall never forget—that Gilgamesh among
       the hairy carnivora—that cat with the

   wedge-shaped, slate-gray marks on its forelegs and the resolute tail,
   astringently remarking: “They have imposed on us with their pale,
     half fledged protestations, trembling about
       in inarticulate frenzy, saying
         it is not for all of us to understand art, finding it
       all so difficult, examining the thing

   as if it were something inconceivably arcanic, as
   symmetrically frigid as something carved out of chrysopras
     or marble—strict with tension, malignant
       in its power over us and deeper
         than the sea when it proffers flattery in exchange for hemp,
       rye, flax, horses, platinum, timber and fur.”




WHEN I BUY PICTURES


    or what is closer to the truth, when I look at
      that of which I may regard myself as the
        imaginary possessor, I fix upon that which would
      give me pleasure in my average moments: the satire upon curiosity,
          in which no more is discernible than the intensity of the
          mood;

    or quite the opposite—the old thing, the medi-
      æval decorated hat box, in which there
        are hounds with waists diminishing like the waist of the
        hour-glass
      and deer, both white and brown, and birds and seated people; it
      may be no more than a square
          of parquetry; the literal biography perhaps—in letters stand-

    ing well apart upon a parchment-like expanse;
      or that which is better without words, which means
        just as much or just as little as it is understood to
      mean by the observer—the grave of Adam, prefigured by himself; a
        bed of beans
        or artichokes in six varieties of blue; the snipe-legged hiero—

    glyphic in three parts; it may be anything. Too
      stern an intellectual emphasis, i-
        ronic or other—upon this quality or that, detracts
      from one’s enjoyment; it must not wish to disarm anything; nor may
          the approved tri-
          umph easily be honoured—that which is great because something
          else is small.

    It comes to this: of whatever sort it is, it
      must make known the fact that it has been displayed
        to acknowledge the spiritual forces which have made it;
      and it must admit that it is the work of X, if X produced it; of
          Y, if made by Y. It must be a voluntary gift with the name
          written on it.




PICKING AND CHOOSING


    Literature is a phase of life: if
      one is afraid of it, the situation is irremediable; if
    one approaches it familiarly,
      what one says of it is worthless. Words are constructive
    when they are true; the opaque allusion—the simulated flight

    upward—accomplishes nothing. Why cloud the fact
      that Shaw is selfconscious in the field of sentiment but is
      otherwise re-
    warding? that James is all that has been
      said of him but is not profound? It is not Hardy
    the distinguished novelist and Hardy the poet, but one man

    “interpreting life through the medium of the
      emotions.” If he must give an opinion, it is permissible that the
    critic should know what he likes. Gordon
      Craig with his “this is I” and “this is mine,” with his three
    wise men, his “sad French greens” and his Chinese cherries—Gordon
      Craig, so

    inclinational and unashamed—has carried
      the precept of being a good critic, to the last extreme. And Burke
      is a
    psychologist—of acute, raccoon-
      like curiosity. Summa diligentia;
    to the humbug, whose name is so amusing—very young and ve-

    ry rushed, Cæsar crossed the Alps on the “top of a
      diligence.” We are not daft about the meaning but this familiarity
    with wrong meanings puzzles one. Humming-
      bug, the candles are not wired for electricity.
    Small dog, going over the lawn, nipping the linen and saying

    that you have a badger—remember Xenophon;
      only the most rudimentary sort of behaviour is necessary
    to put us on the scent; a “right good
      salvo of barks,” a few “strong wrinkles” puckering the
    skin between the ears, are all we ask.




ENGLAND


    with its baby rivers and little towns, each with its abbey or its
      cathedral;
      with voices—one voice perhaps, echoing through the transept—the
    criterion of suitability and convenience; and Italy with its equal
        shores—contriving an epicureanism from which the grossness has
        been

    extracted; and Greece with its goats and its gourds, the nest of
      modified illusions:
      and France, the “chrysalis of the nocturnal butterfly” in
    whose products, mystery of construction diverts one from what was
        originally one’s
        object—substance at the core: and the East with its snails, its
        emotional

    shorthand and jade cockroaches, its rock crystal and its
      imperturbability,
      all of museum quality: and America where there
    is the little old ramshackle victoria in the south, where cigars are
        smoked on the
        street in the north; where there are no proof readers, no
        silkworms, no digressions;

    the wild man’s land; grass-less, links-less, language-less
      country—in which letters are written
      not in Spanish, not in Greek, not in Latin, not in shorthand
    but in plain American which cats and dogs can read! The letter “a”
        in psalm and calm when
        pronounced with the sound of “a” in candle, is very noticeable
        but

    why should continents of misapprehension have to be accounted for by
      the
      fact? Does it follow that because there are poisonous toadstools
    which resemble mushrooms, both are dangerous? In the case of
        mettlesomeness which may be
        mistaken for appetite, of heat which may appear to be haste, no
        con-

    clusions may be drawn. To have misapprehended the matter, is to have
      confessed
      that one has not looked far enough. The sublimated wisdom
    of China, Egyptian discernment, the cataclysmic torrent of emotion
        compressed
        in the verbs of the Hebrew language, the books of the man who is
        able

    to say, “I envy nobody but him and him only, who catches more fish
      than
      I do,”—the flower and fruit of all that noted superi-
    ority—should one not have stumbled upon it in America, must one
        imagine
        that it is not there? It has never been confined to one
        locality.




DOCK RATS


    There are human beings who seem to regard the place as craftily
      as we do—who seem to feel that it is a good place to come
      home to. On what a river; wide—twinkling like a chopped sea under
          some
          of the finest shipping in the

    world: the square-rigged four-master, the liner, the battleship,
      like the two-
      thirds submerged section of an iceberg; the tug—strong moving
      thing,
      dipping and pushing, the bell striking as it comes; the steam
          yacht, lying
          like a new made arrow on the

    stream; the ferry-boat—a head assigned, one to each compartment,
      making
      a row of chessmen set for play. When the wind is from the east,
      the smell is of apples; of hay, the aroma increased and decreased
          suddenly as the wind changes;

    of rope; of mountain leaves for florists. When it is from the west,
      it is
      an elixir. There is occasionally a parrakeet
      arrived from Brazil, clasping and clawing; or a monkey—tail and
          feet
          in readiness for an over-

    ture. All palms and tail; how delightful! There is the sea, moving
      the bulk-
      head with its horse strength; and the multiplicity of rudders
      and propellers; the signals, shrill, questioning, peremptory,
          diverse;
          the wharf cats and the barge dogs—it

    is easy to overestimate the value of such things. One does
      not live in such a place from motives of expediency
      but because to one who has been accustomed to it, shipping is the
          most congenial thing in the world.




RADICAL


    Tapering
    to a point, conserving everything,
      this carrot is predefined to be thick.
        The world is
        but a circumstance, a mis-
          erable corn-patch for its feet. With ambition,
          imagination, outgrowth,

    nutriment,
    with everything crammed belligerent-
      ly inside itself, its fibres breed mon-
      opoly—
      a tail-like, wedge-shaped engine with the
        secret of expansion, fused with intensive heat
        to the color of the set-

    ting sun and
    stiff. For the man in the straw hat, stand-
      ing still and turning to look back at it—
        as much as
        to say my happiest moment has
          been funereal in comparison with this, the con-
          ditions of life pre-

    determined
    slavery to be easy and freedom hard. For
      it? Dismiss
      agrarian lore; it tells him this:
        that which it is impossible to force, it is
        impossible to hinder.




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
      that there is 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

    high sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because they
      are
      useful; when they become so derivative as to become
      unintelligible, the
      same thing may be said for all of us—that we
        do not admire what
        we cannot understand. The bat,
          holding on upside down or in quest of something to

    eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf
      under
      a tree, the immovable critic twinkling his skin like a horse that
      feels a flea, the base-
      ball fan, the statistician—case after case
        could be cited did
        one wish it; nor is it valid
          to discriminate against “business documents and

    school-books”; all these phenomena are important. One must make a
      distinction
      however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is
      not poetry,
      nor till the autocrats among us can be
        “literalists of
        the imagination”—above
          insolence and triviality and can present

    for inspection, imaginary gardens with real toads in them, shall we
      have
      it. In the meantime, if you demand on one hand, in defiance of
      their opinion—
      the raw material of poetry in
        all its rawness and
        that which is, on the other hand,
          genuine then you are interested in poetry.




IN THE DAYS OF PRISMATIC COLOR


    not in the days of Adam and Eve but when Adam
      was alone; when there was no smoke and color was
    fine, not with the fineness of
      early civilization art but by virtue
    of its originality, with nothing to modify it but the

    mist that went up, obliqueness was a varia-
      tion of the perpendicular, plain to see and
    to account for: it is no
      longer that; nor did the blue red yellow band
    of incandescence that was color, keep its stripe: it also is one of

    those things into which much that is peculiar can be
      read; complexity is not a crime but carry
    it to the point of murki-
      ness and nothing is plain. A complexity
    moreover, that has been committed to darkness, instead of granting
      it-

    self to be the pestilence that it is, moves all a-
      bout as if to bewilder with the dismal
    fallacy that insistence
      is the measure of achievement and that all
    truth must be dark. Principally throat, sophistication is as it al-

    ways has been—at the antipodes from the init-
      ial great truths. “Part of it was crawling, part of it
    was about to crawl, the rest
      was torpid in its lair.” In the short legged, fit-
    ful advance, the gurgling and all the minutiæ—we have the classic

    multitude of feet. To what purpose! Truth is no Apollo
      Belvedere, no formal thing. The wave may go over it if it likes.
    Know that it will be there when it says:
      “I shall be there when the wave has gone by.”




IS YOUR TOWN NINEVEH?


    Why so desolate?
      And why multiply
        in phantasmagoria about fishes,
          what disgusts you? Could
            not all personal upheaval in
              the name of freedom, be tabood?

    Is it Nineveh
      and are you Jonah
        in the sweltering east wind of your wishes?
          I, myself have stood
            there by the aquarium, looking
              at the Statue of Liberty.




        Printed at the Pelican Press, 2 Carmelite Street, E.C.