Thursday, November 8, 2007

"Silences"

One of my favorite poems:


My father used to say,
"Superior people never make long visits,
have to be shown Longfellow's grave
or the glass flowers at Harvard.
Self-reliant like the cat --
that takes its prey to privacy,
the mouse's limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth --
they sometimes enjoy solitude,
and can be robbed of speech
by speech which has delighted them.
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;
not in silence, but restraint."
Nor was he insincere in saying, "Make my house your inn."
Inns are not residences.

-- Marianne Moore

2 comments:

  1. Alfred:

    Now that Stylus is gone, where are your reviews going to appear? (Sorry, I know you asked me to send you an email with that question at one point; I tried that via ILX's email feature, but I'm such a techno-peasant that I fear it didn't get through). Thanks.

    -- Daniel

    ReplyDelete
  2. You'll start seeing links to published stuff on the right margin.

    Thanks for reading.

    ReplyDelete