Editor's Selection of Poems The Web One Weaves of Italy
by Marianne Moore
grows till it is not what but which,
blurred by too much. The very blase alone coule
choose the contest or fair to which to go.
The crossbow tournament at Gubbio?
For quiet excitement, canoe-ers
or peach fairs? or near Perugria, the mule-show;
if not the Palio, slaying the Saracen.
One salutes - on reviewing again
this modern mythologica
esopica - its nonchanlances of the mind,
that "fount by which enchanting gems are spilt."
Are we not charmed by the result? -
quite different from what goes on
at the Sorbonne; but not entirely, since flowering
in more than mere talent for spectacle.
Because the heart is in it all is well.