Marianne Moore

 

The Mind is a wonderful Thing

is an enchanted thing
like the glaze on a 
katydid-wing
subdivided by sun
till the nettings are legion.
Like Giesking playing Scarltti;

like the apteryx-awl
as a beak, or the 
kiwi's rain-shawl
of haired feathers, the mind
feeling its way as though blind,
walks along with its eyes on the ground.

It has memory's ear
that can hear without
having to hear.
Like the gyroscope's fall,
truly equivocal
because trued by regnant certainty,

it is a power of strong enchantment. It 
is like the dove-
neck animated by
sun; it is memory's eye;
it's conscientious inconsistency.

It tears off the veil; tears
the temptation, the 
mist the heart wears,
from its eyes - if the heart
has a face; it takes apart
dejection. It's fire in the dove-neck's

iridescence; in the inconsistencies 
of Scarlatti.
Unconfusion submits 
its confusion to proof; it's
not a Herod's oath that cannot change.