Fiddle-faddle.(New poems)(Brief Article)(Poem)

there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle--Marianne Moore, "Poetry"

 
Fiddle-faddle 
 
   Well, all that fiddle 
   perhaps. But not this 
   sublime faddle, far 
      more important 
 
   than whatever "this 
   fiddle" might have been 
   (although granted not 
      the resonant 
 
   machine of spruce and 
   maple that we need 
      to hear certain 
   kinds of truth with). 
 
   Fiddle can sound as 
      if it had a 
   silly middle and 
   were thereby of use 
   for crumpling knowledge, 
   work delighted in, 
   devout attention, 
      into a ball 
 
      and tossing it 
   away in some slight 
   annoyance (but not 
   to every one's) and 
 
   (worse!) averting one's 
   gaze from what follows 
   it so doggedly: 
   fiddle's dark shadow, 
 
   faddle--not a past 
   tense of the verb we 
   have been fiddling with 
      but rather a 
 
   residue of all 
   that business of strings-- 
   strings bowed and tickled 
      and pinched and plucked-- 
 
   ...