A Grave · Marianne Moore

M a n looking into the sea,

taking the view from those who have as much right to it as you have

to it yourself,

it is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing,

but you cannot stand in the middle of this;

4. "Diary of Tolstoy (Dutton), p. 84. 'Where the p. 182. 'The limitation of [Blake's] view was from

boundary between prose and poetry lies, I shall the very intensity of his vision; he was a too literal

never be able to understand. The question is raised realist of imagination, as others are of nature; and

in manuals of style, yet the answer to it lies beyond because he believed that the figures seen by the

me. Poetry is verse: prose is not verse. Or else mind's eye, when exalted by inspiration, were "eter-

poetry is everything with the exception of business nal existences, symbols of divine essences, he

documents and school books' " [Moore's note]. hated every grace of style that might obscure their

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), Russian novelist, phi- lineaments' " [Moore's note]. William Butler Yeats

losopher, and mystic. (1865-1939; see pp. 1188-1211), Irish poet and

5. "Yeats: Ideas of Good and Evil (A. H. Bullen),dramatist.

the s e a has n o t h i n g to give b u t a well excavated grave.

The firs stand in a procession, each with an emerald turkey-foot at the

top,

reserved as their c o n t o u r s , saying nothing;

repression, however, is not the most obvious characteristic of the sea;

the sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look.

T h e r e are others b e s i d e s you w h o have worn that l o o k —

whose expression is no longer a protest; the fish no longer investigate

them

for their b o n e s have not lasted:

men lower nets, unconscious of the fact that they are desecrating a

grave,

a n d row quickly a w a y — t h e blades of the oars

moving together like the feet of water-spiders as if there were no such

thing as death.

The wrinkles progress among themselves in a phalanx 6 —beautiful

under networks of foam,

and fade breathlessly while the sea rustles in and out of the seaweed;

the birds swim through the air at top speed, emitting cat-calls as

heretofore—

the tortoise-shell scourges about the feet of the cliffs, in motion

beneath them;

and the ocean, under the pulsation of lighthouses and noise of

bell-buoys,

advances as usual, looking as if it were not that ocean in which

dropped things are bound to sink—

in which if they turn a n d twist, it is neither with volition nor

c o n s c i o u s n e s s .

1924, 1935