Poem 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.

1. Diligence Is to Magic as Progress Is to Flight
2. “He Wrote the History Book”, It Said
3. Feed Me, Also, River God
4. Black Earth
5. To a Steam Roller

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