Poem 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 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.

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

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