"In this age of hard trying nonchalance is good, and" by Marianne Moore

IN THIS AGE OF HARD TRYING
NONCHALANCE IS GOOD, AND

really, it is not the
    business of the gods to bake clay pots. They did not
        do it in this instance. A few
            revolved upon the axes of their worth
    as if excessive popularity might be a pot;

they did not venture the
    profession of humility. The polished wedge
        that might have split the firmament
            was dumb. At last it threw itself away
    and falling down, conferred on some poor fool, a privilege.

Taller by the length of
    a conversation of five hundred years than all
        the others, there was one, whose tales
            of what could never have been actual—
    were better than the haggish, uncompanionable drawl

of certitude; his by-
    play was more terrible in its effectiveness
        than the fiercest frontal attack.
            The staff, the bag, the feigned inconsequence
    of manner, best bespeak that weapon, self protectiveness.


Source of the text - Marianne Moore, Poems.  London: The Egoist Press, 1921, p. 14.

TJB: The poem—stately, rhymed syllabic-iambic—makes us wonder: who’s the polished wedge & poor fool? Does it matter, since fiction is preferred?