from The Monkeys
. . . It is difficult to recall the ornament,
speech, and precise manner of what one might
call the minor acquaintances twenty
years back; but I shall not forget him — that Gilgamesh among
the hairy carnivora - that cat with the
wedge-shaped, slate-gray marks on its forelegs and the resolute tail,
astringently remarking, "They have imposed on us with their pale
half-fledged protestations, trembling about
in inarticulate frenzy, saying
it is not for us to understand art; . . ."
— Marianne Moore, The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore (Macmillan, 1980)
