6 Jul: "Black Earth" by Marianne Moore

Black Earth

BY MARIANNE MOORE

Openly, yes, 

         With the naturalness 

         Of the hippopotamus or the alligator 

When it climbs out on the bank to experience the 

Sun, I do these 

Things which I do, which please 

         No one but myself.  Now I breathe and now I am sub- 

         Merged; the blemishes stand up and shout when the object 

In view was a 

Renaissance; shall I say 

         The contrary?  The sediment of the river which 

         Encrusts my joints, makes me very gray but I am used 

To it, it may 

Remain there; do away 

         With it and I am myself done away with, for the 

         Patina of circumstance can but enrich what was 

There to begin 

With.  This elephant skin 

         Which I inhabit, fibered over like the shell of 

         The coco-nut, this piece of black glass through which no light 

Can filter—cut 

Into checkers by rut 

         Upon rut of unpreventable experience— 

         It is a manual for the peanut-tongued and the 

Hairy toed.  Black 

But beautiful, my back 

         Is full of the history of power.  Of power?  What 

         Is powerful and what is not?  My soul shall never 

Be cut into 

By a wooden spear; through- 

         Out childhood to the present time, the unity of 

         Life and death has been expressed by the circumference 

Described by my 

Trunk; nevertheless, I 

         Perceive feats of strength to be inexplicable after 

         All; and I am on my guard; external poise, it 

Has its centre 

Well nurtured—we know 

         Where—in pride, but spiritual poise, it has its centre where ? 

         My ears are sensitized to more than the sound of 

The wind.  I see 

And I hear, unlike the 

         Wandlike body of which one hears so much, which was made 

         To see and not to see; to hear and not to hear, 

That tree trunk without   

Roots, accustomed to shout 

         Its own thoughts to itself like a shell, maintained intact   

         By who knows what strange pressure of the  atmosphere; that   

Spiritual   

Brother to the coral 

         Plant, absorbed into which, the equable sapphire light 

         Becomes a nebulous green.  The I of each is to 

The I of each, 

A kind of fretful speech 

         Which sets a limit on itself; the elephant is? 

         Black earth preceded by a tendril?  It is to that 

Phenomenon 

The above formation,   

         Translucent like the atmosphere—a cortex merely— 

         That on which darts cannot strike decisively the first 

Time, a substance 

Needful as an instance 

         Of the indestructibility of matter; it   

         Has looked at the electricity and at the earth- 

Quake and is still 

Here; the name means thick.  Will 

         Depth be depth, thick skin be thick, to one who can see no 

         Beautiful element of unreason under it?