Marianne Moore
Smooth Gnarled Crape Myrtle
A brass-green bird with grass-
green throat smooth as a nut springs from
twig to twig askew, copying the
Chinese flower piece–businesslike atom
in the stiff-leafed tree's blue-
pink dregs-of-wine pyramids
of mathematical
circularity; one of a
pair. A redbird with a hatchet
crest lights straight, on a twig
between the two, bending the
peculiar
bouquet down; and there are
moths and lady-bugs,
a boot-jack firefly with black wings
and a pink head. "The legendary white-
eared, black bulbul that sings
only in pure Sanskrit" should
be here–"tame clever
true nightingale." The cardinal-
bird that is usually a
pair, looks somewhat odd, like
"the ambassadorial
Inverness
worn by one who dresses
in New York but dreams of
London." It was artifice saw,
on a patch-box pigeon-egg, room for
fervent script, and wrote as with a bird's claw
under the pair on the
hyacinth-blue lid–"joined in
friendship, crowned by love."
An aspect may deceive; as the
elephant's columbine-tubed trunk
held waveringly out–
an at will heavy thing–is
delicate.
Art is unfortunate.
One may be a blameless
bachelor, and it is but a step
to Congreve. A Rosalindless
redbird comes where people are, knowing they
have not made a point of
being where he is–this bird
which says not sings, "without
loneliness I should be more
lonely, so I keep it"–half in
Japanese. And what of
our clasped hands that swear, "By Peace
Plenty; as
by Wisdom Peace." Alas!
Marianne Moore, The Collected Poems of Marianne
Moore, Viking Penguin, 1941.