The Past is the Present

by Marianne Moore

If external action is effete

and rhyme is outmoded,

I shall revert to you,

Habakkuk, as when in a Bible class

the teacher was speaking of unrhymed verse.

He said - and I think I repeat his exact words -

"Hebrew poetry is prose

with a sort of heightened consciousness." Ecstasy affords

the occasion and expediency determines the form.