In This Age of Hard Trying, Nonchalance Is Good and

Marianne Moore, 1887 – 1972

“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.