Poem by Marianne Moore

Those Various Scalpels

Those
various sounds consistently indistinct, like intermingled
        echoes
  struck from thin glass successively at random—the
  inflection disguised: your hair, the tails of two
        fighting-cocks head to head in stone—like sculptured
        scimitars re-
      peating the curve of your ears in reverse order: your eyes,
        flowers of ice

and
snow sown by tearing winds on the cordage of disabled
        ships: your raised hand
  an ambiguous signature: your cheeks, those rosettes
  of blood on the stone floors of French châteaux, with
        regard to which guides are so affirmative:
      your other hand

a
bundle of lances all alike, partly hid by emeralds from
        Persia
  and the fractional magnificence of Florentine
  goldwork—a collection of half a dozen little objects
        made fine
      with enamel in gray, yellow, and dragonfly blue: a lemon, a

pear
and three bunches of grapes, tied with silver: your dress, a
        magnificent square
  cathedral of uniform
  and at the same time, diverse appearance—a species of
        vertical vineyard rustling in the storm
      of conventional opinion. Are they weapons or scalpels?
        Whetted

to
brilliance by the hard majesty of that sophistication which
        is su-
  perior to opportunity, these things are rich
  instruments with which to experiment but surgery is
        not tentative: why dissect destiny with instruments
        which
      are more highly specialized than the tissues of destiny
        itself?

1. Pedantic Literalist
2. Feed Me, Also, River God
3. He Made This Screen
4. Diligence Is to Magic as Progress Is to Flight
5. To William Butler Yeats on Tagore

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