The Grasshopper

O, sylph of mid-air volition, you constitute a gulf, a mist to have in rhymes beneath the blue.

Encircled in stationary light, shifting ambivalent pit-pit-a-pat, though hidden, hides self the noise, free;

and who breeds black and green along the tags of rock ready for arches; yet are not, deemed afterwards ambitious.

There throw philobibters, for you pursue from palm on foot while angles marry drops,

perhed upon alight blue; you ricochet in insinuitures while searching delightful songs,

yet many are down along, that over drift leads all back. Resounding of yore—(

past skeins for the walls—you pipe) where consensus of salinity is hard sprays left on fragile combines,

and you’ll be flying in coarse wind like lost marrow, losing desire for how many dream of independence! Go on, so hollow—

in the softest fine rain as thresholds, akin to loose strings, ‘there must come harm, flocks of disaster; our unroached life sharing an632042—

fools admiring springs, suction, floating from burden serpents nurtured wail; and I became man clumped there; in verdant patches of being.

Yet worldly flesh holds goodness in decline. Will waking rise upon horizontal hallowed chimneys, “free”? A work or loss, and shifting throughty folks: in winged earth and grace— your sounds by balancing gene. Here—you touch down, enhance. Let fly, dears, let live in dream!

• Marianne Moore