What Are Years?
Marianne Moore


What is our innocence,
what is our guilt? All are
naked, none is safe. And whence
is courage: the unanswered question,
the resolute doubt,—
dumbly calling, deafly listening—that
in misfortune, even death,
encourages others
and in its defeat, stirs

the soul to be strong? He
sees deep and is glad, who
accedes to mortality
and in his imprisonment, rises
upon himself as
the sea in a chasm, struggling to be
free and unable to be,
in its surrendering
finds its continuing.

So he who strongly feels,
behaves. The very bird,
grown taller as he sings, steels
his form straight up. Though he is captive,
his mighty singing
says, satisfaction is a lowly
thing, how pure a thing is joy.
This is mortality,
This is eternity.

Roses Only
Marianne Moore


You do not seem to realize that beauty is 
a liability rather than
   an asset — that in view of the fact that 
spirit creates form we are
      justified in supposing
      that you must have brains. For you, a 
symbol of the unit, stiff
      and sharp,
   conscious of surpassing by dint of 
native superiority and liking
      for everything
self-dependent, anything an

ambitious civilization might produce: for 
you, unaided, to attempt
      through sheer
   reserve to confute presumptions
resulting from observation is
      idle. You cannot make us
      think you a delightful happen-so. But
rose, if you are brilliant,
      it
   is not because your petals are the
without-which-nothing of pre-
      eminence. You would look, minus
thorns — like a what-is-this, a mere

peculiarity. They are not proof against a
storm, the elements, or 
      mildew
   but what about the predatory hand?
What is brilliance without 
      coordination? Guarding the 
      infinitesimal pieces of your mind,
compelling audience to 
   the remark that it is better to be
forgotten than to be
      remembered too violently,
your thorns are the best part of you.