Poems (Marianne Moore)/MY APISH COUSINS

by Marianne Moore

MY APISH COUSINS

winked too much and were afraid of snakes. The zebras, supreme in
their abnormality; the elephants with their fog-colored skin
 and strictly practical appendages
  were there, the small cats and the parrakeet—
   trivial and humdrum on examination, destroying
  bark and portions of the food it could not eat.

I recall their magnificence, now not more magnificent
than it is dim. It is difficult to recall the ornament,
 speech, and precise manner of what one might
  call the minor acquaintances twenty
   years back; but I shall never forget—that Gilgamesh among
  the hairy carnivora—that cat with the

wedge-shaped, slate-gray marks on its forelegs and the resolute tail,
astringently remarking: "They have imposed on us with their pale,
 half fledged protestations, trembling about
  in inarticulate frenzy, saying
   it is not for all of us to understand art, finding it
  all so difficult, examining the thing

as if it were something inconceivably arcanic, as
symmetrically frigid as something carved out of chrysopras
 or marble—strict with tension, malignant
  in its power over us and deeper
   than the sea when it proffers flattery in exchange for hemp,
  rye, flax, horses, platinum, timber and fur."