Marianne Moore

The face
         that has come down to us
                   through the photographs
         is of an elderly lady–white hair
                   beneath a broad-brimmed black

boater.
         A face that bears the soft creases but not
                   the deep lines of age; the eyes incisive
         and captivating as any disenfranchised tiger’s;
                   a wry, generous smile tightly-

pursed
          in the knowledge that silence
                   is a most auspicious friend
         to the judicious poet.
                   Her poetry: a

space
         in which we would-be
                   steeplejacks
         might immerse ourselves
                   and grow ever so youthfully older,

in
         contempt only of all that is
                   small-minded, artificial,
         artless and
                   conspicuously untrue.