The Plumet Basilisk

For the plumet basilisk is never the same; it is a most ungracious skin to have. We few who have had glimpses are few, which adds to our dreams.

When it goes, it’s not that you forget but that you revise your belief, and your beliefs lead back, from the troubling instinct, rolling in. Its leaping world laid out is a world of green, with particular grains of seed.

But that one princess, early one evening, had held him, yet she did not wish for anything at all—till the dark drew near. Would she skirmish out, that beast, and lay eyes upon it in the twilight pale on the ground?

Very well, I will make a tour. You, pliable, and hidden; it is I who change, into something that has not existed before. Like pollen, more heartless, yet all pantomime, but a thing.

What sings for you is world, the real scarlet close with her feet, in her perfect nets, the babes, the fullest Belay.

With a deep breath on that bow, laughter is almost higher than laughter. The last mother, the ardent one from another hard flora is lifted in delight.

May she choose us next, on the earth at least, the future lamp-footed, nearly human, as it may make, this presiding sprout, this selfish design may afford thus Marshal Kim.

• Marianne Moore