Marianne Moore Life Poems
- 1. The Pangolin
Another armored animalâ??scale
lapping scale with spruce-cone regularity until they
form the uninterrupted central
tail row! This near artichoke with head and legs and
... - 2. The Steeple-jack
Dürer would have seen a reason for living
in a town like this, with eight stranded whales
to look at; with the sweet sea air coming into your house
on a fine day, from water etched
... - 3. His Shield
The pin-swin or spine-swine
(the edgehog miscalled hedgehog) with all his edges out,
echidna and echinoderm in distressed-
pin-cushion thorn-fur coats, the spiny pig or porcupine,
... - 4. Peter
Strong and slippery, built for the midnight grass-party confronted by four cats,
he sleeps his time away-the detached first claw on his foreleg which corresponds
to the thumb, retracted to its tip; the small tuft of fronds
or katydid legs above each eye, still numbering the units in each group;
... - 5. Marriage
This institution,
perhaps one should say enterprise
out of respect for which
one says one need not change one's mind
... - 6. An Octopus
of ice. Deceptively reserved and flat,
it lies “in grandeur and in mass”
beneath a sea of shifting snow-dunes;
dots of cyclamen-red and maroon on its clearly defined
...
