Monday, November 13, 2023

"An Egyptian Pulled Glass Bottle in the Shape of a Fish" by Marianne Moore


AN EGYPTIAN PULLED GLASS BOTTLE 
IN THE SHAPE OF A FISH


Here we have thirst
and patience, from the first,
    and art, as in a wave held up for us to see
    in its essential perpendicularity;

not brittle but
intense—the spectrum, that
    spectacular and nimble animal the fish,
    whose scales turn aside the sun's sword by their polish.


Source of the text - Marianne Moore, The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore.  London: Faber and Faber, 1956, page 83.

TJB: Model bottle. Describing an ancient object with crisp rhyme, we move from scientific to mythological.  But really, why “thirst”? Or “patience”?
  
  
  

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