Poems by Elizabeth Bishop (1911 – 1979)

One Art battered4 and venerable

and homely. Here and there
The art of losing isn't hard to master; his brown skin hung in strips
so many things seem filled with the intent like ancient wallpaper,
to be lost that their loss is no disaster, and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster 1 shapes like full-blown roses
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. stained and lost through age.
The art of losing isn't hard to master. He was speckled with barnacles5,
fine rosettes of lime,
Then practice losing farther, losing faster: and infested
places, and names, and where it was you meant with tiny white sea-lice,
to travel. None of these will bring disaster. and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or While his gills were breathing in
next-to-last, of three loved houses went. the terrible oxygen
The art of losing isn't hard to master. - the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, that can cut so badly-
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I thought of the coarse white flesh
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture the dramatic reds and blacks
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident of his shiny entrails,
the art of losing's not too hard to master and the pink swim-bladder
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster. like a big peony6.
I looked into his eyes
I Am in Need of Music which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
I am in need of music that would flow
the irises backed and packed
Over my fretful2, feeling fingertips, with tarnished tinfoil
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips, seen through the lenses
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
of old scratched isinglass7.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
They shifted a little, but not
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
to return my stare.
A song to fall like water on my head,
- It was more like the tipping
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow! of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
There is a magic made by melody:
the mechanism of his jaw,
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
and then I saw
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
that from his lower lip
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea, - if you could call it a lip
And floats forever in a moon-green pool, grim, wet, and weaponlike,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
The Fish with the swivel8 still attached,
I caught a tremendous fish with all their five big hooks
and held him beside the boat grown firmly in his mouth.
half out of water, with my hook A green line, frayed at the end
fast in a corner of his mouth. where he broke it, two heavier lines,
He didn't fight. and a fine black thread
He hadn't fought at all. still crimped from the strain and snap
He hung a grunting3 weight, when it broke and he got away.

4
To bater: to beat with successive blows so as to bruise, shatter,
or demolish
1 5
Fluster: a state of agitated confusion Barnacle: craca
2 6
Fretful: irritated and worried Peony: tipo de planta.
7
Isinglass: cola de peixe
3 8
Grunt: the deep short sound characteristic of a ho g Swivel: articulação giratória

Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer9 rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts10,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels11- until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.
Insomnia
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.
By the Universe deserted,
she'd tell it to go to hell,
and she'd find a body of water,
or a mirror, on which to dwell.
So wrap up care in a cobweb
and drop it down the well
into that world inverted
where left is always right,
where the shadows are really the body,
where we stay awake all night,
where the heavens are shallow as the sea
is now deep, and you love me.
The Shampoo
The still explosions on the rocks,
the lichens, grow
by spreading, gray, concentric shocks.
They have arranged
to meet the rings around the moon, although
within our memories they have not changed.
And since the heavens will attend
as long on us,
you've been, dear friend,
precipitate and pragmatical;
and look what happens. For Time is
nothing if not amenable.
9
Bail: a container used to remove water from a boat
10
Thwart: a seat across a boat
11
Gunnel: a small slimy eellike bony fish
Poems by Elizabeth Bishop (1911 – 1979)
The shooting stars in your black hair
in bright formation
are flocking where,
so straight, so soon?
--Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin,
battered and shiny like the moon.
Arrival At Santos
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,
with a little church on top of one. And warehouses,
some of them painted a feeble pink, or blue,
and some tall, uncertain palms. Oh, tourist,
is this how this country is going to answer you
and your immodest demands for a different world,
and a better life, and complete comprehension
of both at last, and immediately,
after eighteen days of suspension?
Finish your breakfast. The tender is coming,
a strange and ancient craft, flying a strange and brilliant rag.
So that's the flag. I never saw it before.
I somehow never thought of there being a flag,
but of course there was, all along. And coins, I presume,
and paper money; they remain to be seen.
And gingerly12 now we climb down the ladder backward,
myself and a fellow passenger named Miss Breen,
descending into the midst of twenty-six freighters
waiting to be loaded with green coffee beaus.
Please, boy, do be more careful with that boat hook!
Watch out! Oh! It has caught Miss Breen's
skirt! There! Miss Breen is about seventy,
a retired police lieutenant, six feet tall,
with beautiful bright blue eyes and a kind expression.
Her home, when she is at home, is in Glens Falls,
New York. There. We are settled.
The customs officials will speak English, we hope,
and leave us our bourbon and cigarettes.
Ports are necessities, like postage stamps, or soap,
but they seldom seem to care what impression they make,
or, like this, only attempt, since it does not matter,
the unassertive colors of soap, or postage stamps--
wasting away like the former, slipping the way the latter
do when we mail the letters we wrote on the boat,
either because the glue here is very inferior
or because of the heat. We leave Santos at once;
we are driving to the interior.
12
Gingerly: very cautious or careful