You've seen a strawberry
That's had a struggle; yet
Was, where the fragments met,

A hedgehog or a star –
fish for the multitude
of seeds. What better food

than apple seeds; the fruit
within the fruit; locked in
like counter-curved twin

hazelnuts? Frost that kills
the little rubber-plant –

leaves of kok-sagyyz-stalks, can't

harm the roots; they still grow
in frozen ground. Once where
there was a prickley-pear;

leaf clinging to a barbed wire,
a root shot down to grow
in earth two feet below;

as carrots from mandrakes
or a ram's-horn root some-

times. Victory won't come

to me unless I go
to it; a grape tendril
ties a knot in knots till

knotted thirty times; so
the bound twig that's under-
gone and over-gone, can't stir.

The weak overcomes its
menace, the strong over-
comes itself. What is there

Marianne Craig Moore (1887 - 1972), ameriška modernistična pesnica, kritičarka, prevajalka in urednica. Njeno poezijo odlikujejo formalna inovativnost, natančna dikcija, ironija in duhovitost.