Silence -- Marianne Moore

Guest poem submitted by Aseem Kaul

(Poem #1828) Silence My father used to say, "Superior people never make long visits, have to be shown Longfellow's grave nor 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

Such a wonderfully exact poem this. I love that it expresses so precisely
the attitude one has (or would like to have) towards guests, but manages, in
a brief 14 lines, to be both profound ("The deepest feeling always shows
itself in silence / not in silence, but restraint" [1]) and so brilliantly
visual ("the mouse's limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth"). To
read Moore is to have the sense of language being carefully polished, of the
importance of ideas as subject matter for poetry. This poem, with its quiet,
balanced tone, captures that so perfectly.

Aseem

[1] I am reminded of Ezekiel (Poem # 1736): "The slow movement seems,
somehow, to say much more".