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Elizabeth Bishop

Elizabeth Bishop

Late Air

From a magician’s midnight sleeve
the radio-singers
distribute all their love-songs
over the dew-wet lawns.
And like a fortune-teller’s
their marrow-piercing guesses are whatever you believe.
 
But on the Navy Yard aerial I find
better witnesses
for love on summer nights.
Five remote red lights
keep their nests there; Phoenixes
burning quietly, where the dew cannot climb.

#AmericanWriters #FemaleWriters #PulitzerPrize

Other works by Elizabeth Bishop...
Manners

My grandfather said to me as we sat on the wagon seat, “Be sure to remember to always speak to everyone you meet.” We met a stranger on foot.
Manuelzinho

Half squatter, half tenant (no ren… a sort of inheritance; white, in your thirties now, and supposed to supply me with vegetables, but you don’t; or you won’t; or yo…
Filling Station

Oh, but it is dirty! —this little filling station, oil—soaked, oil—permeated to a disturbing, over—all black translucency.
The Fish

I caught a tremendous fish and held him beside the boat half out of water, with my hook fast in a corner of his mouth. He didn’t fight.
 2
 3
Questions of Travel

There are too many waterfalls here… hurry too rapidly down to the sea, and the pressure of so many clouds… makes them spill over the sides in… turning to waterfalls under our ve…
In the Waiting Room

In Worcester, Massachusetts, I went with Aunt Consuelo to keep her dentist’s appointment and sat and waited for her in the dentist’s waiting room.
The Moose

From narrow provinces of fish and bread and tea, home of the long tides where the bay leaves the sea twice a day and takes
Strayed Crab

This is not my home. How did I ge… be over that way somewhere. I am the color of wine, of tinta.… right claw is saffron—yellow. See,… flag. I am dapper and elegant; I…
The End of March

It was cold and windy, scarcely th… to take a walk on that long beach Everything was withdrawn as far as… indrawn: the tide far out, the oce… seabirds in ones or twos.
Letter to N.Y.

In your next letter I wish you’d… where you are going and what you a… how are the plays and after the pl… what other pleasures you’re pursui… taking cabs in the middle of the n…
To Be Written on the Mirror in Whitewash

I live only here, between your eye… But I live in your world. What do… —Collect no interest—otherwise wha… Above all I am not that staring m…
The Bight

At low tide like this how sheer th… White, crumbling ribs of marl prot… and the boats are dry, the pilings… Absorbing, rather than being absor… the water in the bight doesn’t wet…
 1
A Summer’s Dream

To the sagging wharf few ships could come. The population numbered two giants, an idiot, a dwarf, a gentle storekeeper
While Someone Telephones

Wasted, wasted minutes that couldn… minutes of a barbaric condescensio… —Stare out the bathroom window at… at their dark needles, accretions… woodenly crystallized, and where t…
Nine-banded armadillo, by John Woodhouse Audubon
The Armadillo

This is the time of year when almost every night the frail, illegal fire balloons a… Climbing the mountain height, rising toward a saint
 1
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