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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

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Trouvée

Oh, why should a hen have been run over on West 4th Street in the middle of summer? She was a white hen
Exchanging Hats

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While Someone Telephones

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The Unbeliever

He sleeps on the top of a mast with his eyes fast closed. The sails fall away below him like the sheets of his bed, leaving out in the air of the nigh…
Strayed Crab

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Breakfast Song

My love, my saving grace, your eyes are awfully blue. I kiss your funny face, your coffee-flavored mouth. Last night I slept with you.
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Sandpiper

The roaring alongside he takes for… and that every so often the world… He runs, he runs to the south, fin… in a state of controlled panic, a… The beach hisses like fat. On his…
The Monument

Now can you see the monument? It… built somewhat like a box. No. Bu… like several boxes in descending s… one above the other. Each is turned half—way round so t…
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…
Crusoe in England

A new volcano has erupted, the papers say, and last week I wa… where some ship saw an island bein… at first a breath of steam, ten mi… and then a black fleck—basalt, pro…
Squatter's Children

On the unbreathing sides of hills they play, a specklike girl and bo… alone, but near a specklike house. The Sun’s suspended eye blinks casually, and then they wad…
Chemin De Fer

Alone on the railroad track I walked with pounding heart. The ties were too close together or maybe too far apart. The scenery was impoverished:
At the Fishhouses

Although it is a cold evening, down by one of the fishhouses an old man sits netting, his net, in the gloaming almost in… a dark purple—brown,
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Minnow, go to sleep and dream, Close your great big eyes; Round your bed Events prepare The pleasantest surprise. Darling Minnow, drop that frown,
The Shampoo

The still explosions on the rocks, the lichens, grow by spreading, gray, concentric sho… They have arranged to meet the rings around the moon,…



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