There's Nothing More Cheerful

Than an artful Marianne Moore
Poem that comes flying from its title
In precisely measured arabesques,
Wheeling
And descending, down, down the page,
More like a tumbling sparrow
Evading a shadow of hawk
Or a paper airplane thrown
(On which is drawn an arch,
Exact caricature
Of the human as ocean
Or animal) from the bleachers
Over the elegant players' heads
At a ball game,
Than something we'd call lyric.

She doesn't even have to like
What she's imagining to make it
Unimaginably likeable,
Too much
Unlike a swart swan, pangolin,
Or caster-wheeled jerboa,
Modest, but furnished with fine legs,
Too much akin to fables
That name beasts like cultures,
Local as crinoline
Skirts flounced or Roman togas
Flaunted when senators feasted
Over storehouses emptied out for
Sheer abundance
When trading panegyrics.