Poem by Marianne Moore

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.

1. The Fish
2. Roses Only
3. To William Butler Yeats on Tagore
4. Those Various Scalpels
5. Black Earth

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