Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore

I was just looking for a picture of Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop together to accompany the poem below, but I could only find this one, which, delightfully, has lots of other interesting people in it, as well:

The Gotham Book Mart was famous for its literary eminences. A December 1948 party for Osbert and Edith Sitwell (seated, center) drew a roomful of bright lights to the Gotham Book Mart: clockwise from W. H. Auden, on the ladder at top right, were Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore, Delmore Schwartz, Randall Jarrell, Charles Henri Ford (cross-legged, on the floor), William Rose Benét, Stephen Spender, Marya Zaturenska, Horace Gregory, Tennessee Williams, Richard Eberhart, Gore Vidal and José Garcia Villa. (Photo: Gotham Book Mart)

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.


I love this poem, and I've loved it for a long time. It reminds
me of the time that Whigwham and Wystan and a group of
other people had to run over the Brooklyn Bridge in order to
make it on time to a performance of water music on a barge.
If I remember correctly, it was the golden hour and we were
following a funny professor who could jog better than you'd
expect. And boy, that bridge is lovely.

"The weather is all arranged. / The waves are running in
verses this fine morning." I know just Bishop's feeling--the
delight of having your kindred spirit close to you. The
delight of a spur of the moment meeting. The desire to
share with someone times that are lovely. And the refrain!
It is so free and repeated that it makes you believe in
flying. Plus, Bishop is so impatient in the poem--
something I can identify with. Sometimes you just get a
craving for a particular person and you need to see them.

I love the reference to Moore's cape and hat. I get a picture
of Moore that's somewhere in the middle of a good and a
bad supernatural being--is she a witch or a fairy? Probably
most like Mary Poppins. 

I made sure to see "the agreeable lions" that "lie in wait /
on the steps of the Public Library / eager to rise and follow
through the doors / up into the reading rooms" on Saturday.