Marianne Moore

O to be a dragon, a symbol of the power of Heaven-of silk-worm size or immense; at times invisible. Felicitous phenomenon!

Omissions are not accidents.

Of the crow-blue mussel shells, one keeps adjusting the ash heaps; opening and shutting itself like an injured fan.

There is a great amount of poetry in unconscious fastidiousness.

The power of the visible is the invisable.

Among animals, one has a sense of humor. Humor saves a few steps, it saves years.

The sweet air coming into your house on a fine day, from water etched with waves as formal as the scales on a fish.

They say there is a sweeter air where it was made, than we have here.

I, too, dislike it. Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it, after all, a place for the genuine.

HE MADE THIS SCREEN not of silver nor of coral, but of weatherbeaten laurel. Here, he introduced a sea uniform like tapestry; here, a fig-tree; there, a face; there, a dragon circling space -- designating here, a bower; there, a pointed passion-flower.