Page:Poems Marianne Moore.djvu/29

has its centre
well nurtured—we know
  where—in pride, but spiritual poise, it has its centre where?
  My ears are sensitized to more than the sound of

the wind. I see
and I hear, unlike the
  wandlike body of which one hears so much, which was made
  to see and not to see; to hear and not to hear;

that tree trunk without
roots, accustomed to shout
  its own thoughts to itself like a shell, maintained intact
  by who knows what strange pressure of the atmosphere; that

spiritual
brother to the coral
  plant, absorbed into which, the equable sapphire light
  becomes a nebulous green. The I of each is to

the I of each,
a kind of fretful speech
  which sets a limit on itself; the elephant is?
  Black earth preceded by a tendril? It is to that

phenomenon
the above formation,
  translucent like the atmosphere—a cortex merely—
  that on which darts cannot strike decisively the first

time, a substance
needful as an instance
  of the indestructibility of matter; it
  has looked at the electricity and at the earth

quake and is still
here; the name means thick. Will
  depth be depth, thick skin be thick, to one who can see no
  beautiful element of unreason under it?

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