Poeticous Logo
en
English Español Français Italiano
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

Other works by Elizabeth Bishop...
The Man-Moth

Here, above, cracks in the buildings are filled… The whole shadow of Man is only a… It lies at his feet like a circle… and he makes an inverted pin, the…
 3
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
Insomnia

The moon in the bureau mirror looks out a million miles (and perhaps with pride, at hersel… but she never, never smiles) far and away beyond sleep, or
 1
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…
The Map

Land lies in water; it is shadowed… Shadows, or are they shallows, at… showing the line of long sea-weede… where weeds hang to the simple blu… Or does the land lean down to lift…
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 Burglar of Babylon

On the fair green hills of Rio There grows a fearful stain: The poor who come to Rio And can’t go home again. On the hills a million people,
First Death in Nova Scotia

In the cold, cold parlor my mother laid out Arthur beneath the chromographs: Edward, Prince of Wales, with Princess Alexandra,
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
 1
Giant Snail

The rain has stopped. The waterfa… night. I have come out to take a w… that is—is wet and cold and covere… white, the size of a dinner plate.… certain rock, but it may well be d…
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…
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,…
View of the Capitol from the Library of Congress

Moving from left to left, the ligh… is heavy on the Dome, and coarse. One small lunette turns it aside and blankly stares off to the side like a big white old wall—eyed hor…
Seascape

This celestial seascape, with whit… flying high as they want and as fa… in tiers and tiers of immaculate r… the whole region, from the highest… down to the weightless mangrove is…
Little Exercise

Think of the storm roaming the sky… like a dog looking for a place to… listen to it growling. Think how they must look now, the… lying out there unresponsive to th…



Top