Poem by Marianne Moore

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.

1. “He Wrote the History Book”, It Said
2. Feed Me, Also, River God
3. Black Earth
4. To a Steam Roller
5. Those Various Scalpels

Print

1190 Views

Last Poems

To Russian version