The Literary Life We climbed Marianne Moore's narrow stair To her bower-bird bric-a-brac nest, in Brooklyn. Daintiest curio relic of Americana. Her talk, a needle Unresting—darning incessantly Chain-mail with crewel-work flowers, Birds and fish on the reef In phosphor-bronze wire. Her face, tiny American treen bobbin On a spindle, Her voice the flickering hum of the old wheel. Then the coin, compulsory, For the subway Back to our quotidian scramble. Why shouldn't we cherish her? You sent her carbon copies of some of your poems. Everything about them— The ghost gloom, the constriction, The bell-jar air-conditioning—made her gasp For oxygen and cheer. She sent them back. (Whoever has her letter has her exact words.) 'Since these seem to be valuable carbon copies (Somewhat smudged) I shall not engross them.' I took the point of that 'engross' Precisely, like a bristle of glass, Snapped off deep in my thumb. You wept And hurled yourself down a floor or two Further from the Empyrean. I carried you back up. And she, Marianne, tight, brisk, Neat and hard as an ant, Slid into the second ot third circle Of my Inferno. A decade later, on her last visit to England, Holding court at a party, she was sitting Bowed over her knees, her face, Under her great hat-brim's floppy petal, Dainty and bright as a piece of confetti— She wanted me to know, she insisted (It was all she wanted so say) With that Missouri needle, drawing each stitch Tight in my ear, That your little near-posthumous memoir 'OCEAN 1212' Was 'so wonderful, so lit, so wonderful'— She bowed so low I had to kneel. I kneeled and Bowed my face close to her upturned face That seemed tinier than ever, And studied, as through a grille, Her lips that put me in mind of a child's purse Made of the skin of a dormouse, Her cheek, as if she has powdered the crumpled silk Of a bat's wing. And I listened, heavy as a graveyard While she searched for the grave Where she could lay down her little wreath. —Ted Hughes --

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