Ars Poetica

by Archibald MacLeish



A poem should be palpable and mute

As a globed fruit,


Dumb

As old medallions to the thumb,


Silent as the sleeve-worn stone

Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—


A poem should be wordless

As the flight of birds.


*


A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs,


Leaving, as the moon releases

Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,


Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,

Memory by memory the mind—


A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs.


*


A poem should be equal to:

Not true.


For all the history of grief

An empty doorway and a maple leaf.


For love

The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—


A poem should not mean

But be.



From Collected Poems 1917–1982, Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1952.