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You Say You Said

1887 –

1972

“Few words are best.”
        Not here. Discretion has been abandoned in this part
        of the world too lately
        For it to be admired. Disgust for it is like the
Equinox—all things in

One. Disgust is
No psychologist and has not opportunity to be a hypocrite.
It says to the saw-toothed bayonet and to the cue
Of blood behind the sub-

Marine—to the
        Poisoned comb, to the Kaiser of Germany and to the
        intolerant gateman at the exit from the eastbound ex-
        press: “I hate
You less than you must hate

Yourselves: You have
        Accoutred me. ‘Without enemies one’s courage flags.’
        Your error has been timed
        To aid me, I am in debt to you for you have primed
Me against subterfuge.”

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on September 22, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.

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         if it must, these things are important not because a

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My father used to say,
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or the glass flowers at Harvard.
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wade
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       Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
       adjusting the ash-heaps;
              opening and shutting itself like

Marianne Moore

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Poems

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You Say You Said

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