Car poems
/ page 641 of 738 /
Arrival At Santos
© Elizabeth Bishop
Here is a coast; here is a harbor;
here, after a meager diet of horizon, is some scenery:
impractically shaped and--who knows?--self-pitying mountains,
sad and harsh beneath their frivolous greenery,
The Burglar Of Babylon
© Elizabeth Bishop
On the fair green hills of Rio
There grows a fearful stain:
The poor who come to Rio
And can't go home again.
Strayed Crab
© Elizabeth Bishop
This is not my home. How did I get so far from water? It must
be over that way somewhere.
I am the color of wine, of tinta. The inside of my powerful
right claw is saffron-yellow. See, I see it now; I wave it like a
North Haven
© Elizabeth Bishop
I can make out the rigging of a schooner
a mile off; I can count
the new cones on the spruce. It is so still
the pale bay wears a milky skin; the sky
no clouds except for one long, carded horse?s tail.
Visits To St. Elizabeths
© Elizabeth Bishop
This is the time
of the tragic man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
A Prodigal
© Elizabeth Bishop
The brown enormous odor he lived by
was too close, with its breathing and thick hair,
for him to judge. The floor was rotten; the sty
was plastered halfway up with glass-smooth dung.
Seascape
© Elizabeth Bishop
This celestial seascape, with white herons got up as angels,
flying high as they want and as far as they want sidewise
in tiers and tiers of immaculate reflections;
the whole region, from the highest heron
The Monument
© Elizabeth Bishop
Now can you see the monument? It is of wood
built somewhat like a box. No. Built
like several boxes in descending sizes
one above the other.
Florida
© Elizabeth Bishop
The state with the prettiest name,
the state that floats in brackish water,
held together by mangrave roots
that bear while living oysters in clusters,
Five Flights Up
© Elizabeth Bishop
Enormous morning, ponderous, meticulous;
gray light streaking each bare branch,
each single twig, along one side,
making another tree, of glassy veins...
The bird still sits there. Now he seems to yawn.
Anaphora
© Elizabeth Bishop
In memory of Marjorie Carr Stevens
Each day with so much ceremony
begins, with birds, with bells,
with whistles from a factory;
The Man-Moth
© Elizabeth Bishop
Man-Moth: Newspaper misprint for "mammoth."
Here, above,
cracks in the buldings are filled with battered moonlight.
First Death In Nova Scotia
© Elizabeth Bishop
In the cold, cold parlor
my mother laid out Arthur
beneath the chromographs:
Edward, Prince of Wales,
Roosters
© Elizabeth Bishop
At four o'clock
in the gun-metal blue dark
we hear the first crow of the first cock
Questions of Travel
© Elizabeth Bishop
"Is it lack of imagination that makes us come
to imagined places, not just stay at home?
Or could Pascal have been not entirely right
about just sitting quietly in one's room?
The Weed
© Elizabeth Bishop
I dreamed that dead, and meditating,
I lay upon a grave, or bed,
(at least, some cold and close-built bower).
In the cold heart, its final thought
Insomnia
© Elizabeth Bishop
The moon in the bureau mirror
looks out a million miles
(and perhaps with pride, at herself,
but she never, never smiles)
far and away beyond sleep, or
perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.
In The Waiting Room
© Elizabeth Bishop
The waiting room was bright
and too hot. It was sliding
beneath a big black wave,
another, and another.
Filling Station
© Elizabeth Bishop
Oh, but it is dirty!
--this little filling station,
oil-soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, over-all
black translucency.
Be careful with that match!
Love Lies Sleeping
© Elizabeth Bishop
Earliest morning, switching all the tracks
that cross the sky from cinder star to star,
coupling the ends of streets
to trains of light.
