Invitation To Miss Marianne Moore

The poem

From Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning, please come flying. In a cloud of fiery pale chemicals, please come flying, to the rapid rolling of thousands of small blue drums descending out of the mackerel sky over the glittering grandstand of harbor-water, please come flying.

Whistles, pennants and smoke are blowing. The ships are signaling cordially with multitudes of flags rising and falling like birds all over the harbor. Enter: two rivers, gracefully bearing countless little pellucid jellies in cut-glass epergnes dragging with silver chains. The flight is safe; the weather is all arranged. The waves are running in verses this fine morning. Please come flying.

Come with the pointed toe of each black shoe trailing a sapphire highlight, with a black capeful of butterfly wings and bon-mots, with heaven knows how many angels all riding on the broad black brim of your hat, please come flying.

Bearing a musical inaudible abacus, a slight censorious frown, and blue ribbons, please come flying. Facts and skyscrapers glint in the tide; Manhattan is all awash with morals this fine morning, so please come flying.

Mounting the sky with natural heroism, above the accidents, above the malignant movies, the taxicabs and injustices at large, while horns are resounding in your beautiful ears that simultaneously listen to a soft uninvented music, fit for the musk deer, please come flying.

For whom the grim museums will behave like courteous male bower-birds, for whom the agreeable lions lie in wait on the steps of the Public Library, eager to rise and follow through the doors up into the reading rooms, please come flying. We can sit down and weep; we can go shopping, or play at a game of constantly being wrong with a priceless set of vocabularies, or we can bravely deplore, but please please come flying.

With dynasties of negative constructions darkening and dying around you, with grammar that suddenly turns and shines like flocks of sandpipers flying, please come flying.

Come like a light in the white mackerel sky, come like a daytime comet with a long unnebulous train of words, from Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning, please come flying.