Moore Poetry

“I, too, dislike it; there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.”
Marianne Moore

I have to agree with Marianne: I, too, dislike it.
I recognize
‘there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle’
with surprise
and heartily, but,
groping for those important things, stirring unbid I feel
the heart in me cut
and patter
in the precise snaking rhythms she employs. I marvel
at her
enviable facility to sight her goal and strike it.

What brings it alive is the formulated paradox,
the sense
of insignificance in the thing she most excels at,
and hence
a good measure
of mortal fallibility which underpins all that
we might treasure,
eschewing
preciousness and pedantry displayed by so many but
choosing
rigorous imagination as the key which unlocks

cells whose inmates tumble, blinking, in unaccustomed light,
furred,
scaly, web-footed, an extraordinary menagerie.
The word
is out,
and won’t now be restrained, its rich animal progeny,
without
pause for thought,
lives its restless destiny, its instinctive pageantry,
however short
its span, needing no one’s approval, knowing itself right.

It can only be what it is: why should that cause offence?
Yet still
the breath on the back of my neck, though hot, brings a shudder,
a little thrill
of adrenal
shock, and a reflex recoil, as an unwitting lover
in final
abandon <br