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Marianne Moore - His Shield
Work rating: Low

The pin-swin or spine-swine
 	(the edgehog miscalled hedgehog) with all his edges out,
    echidna and echinoderm in distressed-
pin-cushion thorn-fur coats, the spiny pig or porcupine,
 	the rhino with horned snout–
    everything is battle-dressed.

Pig-fur won’t do, I’ll wrap
 	myself in salamander-skin like Presbyter John.
    A lizard in the midst of flames, a firebrand
that is life, asbestos-eyed asbestos-eared, with tattooed nap
 	and permanent pig on
    the instep; he can withstand

fire and won’t drown. In his
	 unconquerable country of unpompous gusto,
    gold was so common none considered it; greed
and flattery were unknown. Though rubies large as tennis-
	 balls conjoined in streams so
    that the mountain seemed to bleed,

the inextinguishable 
	 salamander styled himself but presbyter. His shield
    was his humility. In Carpasian
linen coat, flanked by his household lion-cubs and sable
	 retinue, he revealed
    a formula safer than

an armorer’s: the power of relinquishing 
	 what one would keep; that is freedom. Become dinosaur-
    skulled, quilled or salamander-wooled, more ironshod
and javelin-dressed than a hedgehog battalion of steel, but be
	 dull. Don’t be envied or
   armed with a measuring rod.
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