Page:Poems Marianne Moore.djvu/32

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.

 

THE FISH

wade
through black jade.
 Of the crow-blue mussel shells, one
  keeps
  adjusting the ash heaps;
 opening and shutting itself like

an
injured fan.
 The barnacles which encrust the
  side
  of the wave, cannot hide
 there for the submerged shafts of the

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