The pin-swin or spine-swine <br />(the edgehog miscalled hedgehog) with all his edges out, <br />echidna and echinoderm in distressed- <br />pin-cushion thorn-fur coats, the spiny pig or porcupine, <br />the rhino with horned snout– <br />everything is battle-dressed. <br /> <br />Pig-fur won’t do, I’ll wrap <br />myself in salamander-skin like Presbyter John. <br />A lizard in the midst of flames, a firebrand <br />that is life, asbestos-eyed asbestos-eared, with tattooed nap <br />and permanent pig on <br />the instep; he can withstand <br /> <br />fire and won’t drown. In his <br />unconquerable country of unpompous gusto, <br />gold was so common none considered it; greed <br />and flattery were unknown. Though rubies large as tennis- <br />balls conjoined in streams so <br />that the mountain seemed to bleed, <br /> <br />the inextinguishable <br />salamander styled himself but presbyter. His shield <br />was his humility. In Carpasian <br />linen coat, flanked by his household lion-cubs and sable <br />retinue, he revealed <br />a formula safer than <br /> <br />an armorer’s: the power of relinquishing <br />what one would keep; that is freedom. Become dinosaur- <br />skulled, quilled or salamander-wooled, more ironshod <br />and javelin-dressed than a hedgehog battalion of steel, but be <br />dull. Don’t be envied or <br />armed with a measuring rod.<br /><br />Marianne Moore<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/his-shield/
