What Are Years - Poem by Marianne Moore
What is our innocence,
what is our guilt? All are
naked, none is safe. And whence
is courage: the unanswered question,
the resolute doubt, —
dumbly calling, deafly listening—that
in misfortune, even death,
encourage others
and in its defeat, stirs
the soul to be strong? He
sees deep and is glad, who
accedes to mortality
and in his imprisonment rises
upon himself as
the sea in a chasm, struggling to be
free and unable to be,
in its surrendering
finds its continuing.
So he who strongly feels,
behaves. The very bird,
grown taller as he sings, steels
his form straight up. Though he is captive,
his mighty singing
says, satisfaction is a lowly
thing, how pure a thing is joy.
This is mortality,
this is eternity.
what is our guilt? All are
naked, none is safe. And whence
is courage: the unanswered question,
the resolute doubt, —
dumbly calling, deafly listening—that
in misfortune, even death,
encourage others
and in its defeat, stirs
the soul to be strong? He
sees deep and is glad, who
accedes to mortality
and in his imprisonment rises
upon himself as
the sea in a chasm, struggling to be
free and unable to be,
in its surrendering
finds its continuing.
So he who strongly feels,
behaves. The very bird,
grown taller as he sings, steels
his form straight up. Though he is captive,
his mighty singing
says, satisfaction is a lowly
thing, how pure a thing is joy.
This is mortality,
this is eternity.
Marianne Moore
Norma Jeane Baker (Marilyn Monroe) being held by her mother, Gladys Baker, 1926.
“My mother once told me my father died in an accident when I was quite young. My father wasn’t married to my mother when I was born. In fact, he left my mother when he heard from her that I was on the way. His name: Stanley Gifford. I was their love child. He told my mother that she should be glad she was married to Ed Mortenson–at least she could give the baby his name. Stanley Gifford offered my mother money, but she refused. She was willing to get a divorce and marry him, but he wouldn’t do the right thing by her – even if she divorced her husband. I guess that’s what broke her heart – you know what I mean. When you love a man and tell him you’re going to have his child and he runs out on you, it’s something a woman never gets over. I don’t think my mother did. I don’t think I ever did. Yes, it’s a fact, I was conceived perhaps in a moment of passion by my mother, who had always love me – and by a father who would not recognize his obligation to a child that passion would conceive. A father in the eyes of the law, but one who would have nothing to do with his child. Even when I became a successful movie star, he still refused to acknowledge me. All I really wanted from him was to let me call him my father. But he wouldn’t give me the satisfaction of knowing him. He didn’t want the world to know I was his love child, his mistake.” — Marilyn Monroe, from Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own Words.
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