“The End of the Weekend” by Anthony Hecht

A dying firelight slides along the quirt
Of the cast-iron cowboy where he leans
Against my father’s books. the lariat
Whirls into darkness. My girl, in skin-tight jeans,
Fingers a page of Captain Marryat,
Inviting insolent shadows to her shirt.

We rise together to the second floor.
Outside, across the lake, an endless wind
Whips at the headstone of the dead and wails
In the trees for all who have and have not sinned.
She rubs against me and I feel her nails.
Although we are alone, I lock the door.

The eventual shapes of all our formless prayer,

This dark, this cabin of loose imaginings,

Wind, lake, lip, everything awaits

The slow unloosening of her underthings.

And then the noise. Something is dropped. It grates

Against the attic beams.

I climb the stairs

Armed with a belt.

A long magnesium strip

Of moonlight from the dormer cuts a path

Among the shattered skeletons of mice.

A great black presence beats its wings in wrath

Above the boneyard burn its golden eyes.

Some small grey fur is pulsing in its grip.

(6)

“The Burglar of Babylon” by 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.

On the hills a million people,

A million sparrows, nest,
Like a confused migration

That’s had to light and rest,

Building its nests, or houses,

Out of nothing at all, or air.
You’d think a breath would end them,

They perch so lightly there.

But they cling and spread like lichen,

And the people come and come.
There’s one hill called the Chicken,

And one called Catacomb;

There the hill of Kerosene,

And the hill of the Skeleton,
The hill of Astonishment,

And the hill of Babylon.

Micuçú was a burglar and killer,

An enemy of society.
He had escaped three times

From the worst penitentiary.

They don’t know how many he murdered

(Though they say he never raped),
And he wounded two policemen

This last time he escaped.

They said, “He’ll go to his auntie,

Who raised him like a son.
She has a little drink shop

On the hill of Babylon.”

He did go straight to his auntie,

And he drank a final beer.
He told her, “The soldiers are coming,

And I’ve got to disappear.

“Ninety years they gave me.

Who wants to live that long?
I’ll settle for ninety hours,

On the hill of Babylon.

“Don’t tell anyone you saw me.

I’ll run as long as I can.
You were good to me, and I love you,

But I’m a doomed man.”

Going out, he met a mulata

Carrying water on her head.
“If you say you saw me, daughter,

You’re just as good as dead.”

There are caves up there, and hideouts,

And an old fort, falling down.
They used to watch for Frenchmen

From the hill of Babylon.

Below him was the ocean.

It reached far up the sky,
Flat as a wall and on it

Were freighters passing by,

Or climbing the wall, and climbing

Till each looked like a fly,
And then fell over and vanished;

And he knew he was going to die.

He could hear the goats baa-baa-ing,

He could hear the babies cry;
Fluttering kites strained upward;

And he knew he was going to die.

A buzzard flapped so near him

He could see its naked neck.
He waved his arms and shouted,

“Not yet, my son, not yet!”

An Army helicopter

Came nosing around and in.
He could see two men inside it,

But they never spotted him.

The soldiers were all over,

On all sides of the hill,
And right against the skyline

A row of them, small and still.

Children peeked out of windows,

And men in the drink shop swore,
And spat a little cachaça

At the light cracks in the floor.

But the soldiers were nervous, even

With tommy guns in hand,
And one of them, in a panic,

Shot the officer in command.

He hit him in three places;

The other shots went wild.
The soldier had hysterics

And sobbed like a little child.

The dying man said, “Finish

The job we came here for.”
He committed his soul to God

And his sons to the Governor.

They ran and got a priest,

And he died in hope of Heaven
—A man from Pernambuco,

The youngest of eleven.

They wanted to stop the search,

But the Army said, “No, go on,”
So the soldiers swarmed again

Up the hill of Babylon.

Rich people in apartments

Watched through binoculars
As long as daylight lasted.

And all night, under the stars,

Micuçú hid in the grasses

Or sat in a little tree,
Listening for sounds and staring

At the lighthouse out at sea.

And the lighthouse stared back at him,

Till finally it was dawn.
He was soaked with dew and hungry,

On the hill of Babylon.

The yellow sun was ugly,

Like a raw egg on a plate—
Slick from the sea. He cursed it,

For he knew it sealed his fate.

He saw the long white beaches

And people going to swim,
With towels and beach umbrellas,

But soldiers were after him.

Far, far below, the people

Were little colored spots,
And the heads of those in swimming

Were floating coconuts.

He heard the peanut vendor

Go peep-peep on his whistle,
And the man that sells umbrellas

Swinging his watchman’s rattle.

Women with market baskets

Stood on the corners and talked,
Then went their way to market,

Gazing up as they walked.

The rich with their binoculars

Were back again, and many
Were standing on the rooftops,

Among TV antennae.

It was early, eight or eight-thirty.

He saw a soldier climb,
Looking right at him. He fired

And missed for the last time.

He could hear the solider panting,

Though he never got very near.
Micuçú dashed for shelter.

But he got it, behind the ear.

He heard the babies crying

Far, far away in his head,
And the mongrels barking and barking.

Then Micuçú was dead.

He had a Taurus revolver,

And just the clothes he had on,
With two contos in the pockets,

On the hill of Babylon.

The police and populace

Heaved a sigh of relief,
But behind the counter his auntie

Wiped her eyes in grief.

“We have always been respected.

My shop is honest and clean.
I loved him, but from a baby

Micuçú was always mean.

“We have always been respected.

His sister has a job.
Both us gave him money.

Why did he have to rob?

“I raised him to be honest,

Even here, in Babylon slum.”
The customers had another,

Looking serious and glum.

But one of them said to another,

When he got outside the door,
“He wasn’t much of burglar,

He got caught six times—or more.”

This morning the little soldiers

Are on Babylon hill again;
Their gun barrels and helmets

Shine in the gentle rain.

Micuçú is buried already.

They’re after another two,
But they say they aren’t as dangerous

as the poor Micuçú.

On the fair green hills of Rio

There grows a fearful stain:
The poor who come to Rio

And can’t go home again.

There’s the hill of Kerosene,

And the hill of the Skeleton,
The hill of Astonishment,

And the hill of Babylon.

“Visits to St. Elizabeths” by Elizabeth Bishop

[1950]

This is the house of Bedlam.

This is the man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is the time
of the tragic man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is a wristwatch
telling the time
of the talkative man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is a sailor
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the honored man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is the roadstead all of board
reached by the sailor
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the old, brave man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

These are the years and the walls of the ward,
the winds and clouds of the sea of board
sailed by the sailor
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the cranky man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances weeping down the ward
over the creaking sea of board
beyond the sailor
winding his watch
that tells the time
of the cruel man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is a world of books gone flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances weeping down the ward
over the creaking sea of board
of the batty sailor
that winds his watch
that tells the time
of the busy man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is a boy that pats the floor
to see if the world is there, is flat,
for the widowed Jew in the newspaper hat
that dances weeping down the ward
waltzing the length of a weaving board
by the silent sailor
that hears his watch
that ticks the time
of the tedious man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

These are the years and the walls and the door
that shut on a boy that pats the floor
to feel if the world is there and flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances joyfully down the ward
into the parting seas of board
past the staring sailor
that shakes his watch
that tells the time
of the poet, the man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is the soldier home from the war.
These are the years and the walls and the door
that shut on a boy that pats the floor
to see if the world is round or flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances carefully down the ward,
walking the plank of a coffin board
with the crazy sailor
that shows his watch
that tells the time
of the wretched man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

“The Armadillo” by Elizabeth Bishop

For Robert Lowell

This is the time of year
when almost every night
the frail, illegal fire balloons appear.
Climbing the mountain height,

rising toward a saint
still honored in these parts,
the paper chambers flush and fill with light
that comes and goes, like hearts.

Once up against the sky it’s hard
to tell them from the stars –
planets, that is — the tinted ones:
Venus going down, or Mars,

or the pale green one. With a wind,
they flare and falter, wobble and toss;
but if it’s still they steer between
the kite sticks of the Southern Cross,

receding, dwindling, solemnly
and steadily forsaking us,
or, in the downdraft from a peak,
suddenly turning dangerous.

Last night another big one fell.
It splattered like an egg of fire
against the cliff behind the house.
The flame ran down. We saw the pair

of owls who nest there flying up
and up, their whirling black-and-white
stained bright pink underneath, until
they shrieked up out of sight.

The ancient owls’ nest must have burned.
Hastily, all alone,
a glistening armadillo left the scene,
rose-flecked, head down, tail down,

and then a baby rabbit jumped out,
short-eared, to our surprise.
So soft! — a handful of intangible ash
with fixed, ignited eyes.

Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!
O falling fire and piercing cry
and panic, and a weak mailed fist
clenched ignorant against the sky!

“Letter to N.Y.” by Elizabeth Bishop

For Louise Crane

In your next letter I wish you’d say
where you are going and what you are doing;
how are the plays, and after the plays
what other pleasures you’re pursuing:

taking cabs in the middle of the night
driving as if to save your soul
where the road goes round and round the park
and the meter glares like moral owl,

and the trees look so queer and green
standing alone in big black caves
and suddenly you’re in a different place
where everything seems to happen in waves,

and most of the jokes you just can’t catch,
like dirty words rubbed off a slate,
and the songs are loud but somehow dim
and it gets so terribly late,

and coming out of the brownstone house
to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,
one side of the building rises with the sun
like a glistening field of wheat.

– Wheat, not oats, dear. I’m afraid
if it’s wheat it’s none of your sowing,
nevertheless I’d like to know
what you are doing and where you are going.

“Cootchie” by Elizabeth Bishop

Cootchie, Miss Lula’s servant, lies in marl
black into the white she went

below the surface of the coral-reef.
Her life was spent

in caring for Miss Lula, who is deaf,
eating her dinner off the kitchen sink
while Lula ate hers off the kitchen table.
The skies were egg-white for the funeral

and the faces sable.

Tonight the moonlight will alleviate
the melting of the pink wax roses

planted in tin cans filled with sand
placed in a line to mark Miss Lula’s losses

but who will shout and make her understand?
Searching the land and sea for someone else,
the lighthouse will discover Cootchie’s grave
and dismiss all as trivial; the sea, desperate,

will proffer wave after wave.

“Late Air” by Elizabeth Bishop

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.

“One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

“The Moose” by Elizabeth Bishop

For Grace Bulmer Bowers

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
the herrings long rides,

where if the river
enters or retreats
in a wall of brown foam
depends on if it meets
the bay coming in,
the bay not at home;

where, silted red,
sometimes the sun sets
facing a red sea,
and others, veins the flats’
lavender, rich mud
in burning rivulets;

on red, gravelly roads,
down rows of sugar maples,
past clapboard farmhouses
and neat, clapboard churches,
bleached, ridged as clamshells,
past twin silver birches,

through late afternoon
a bus journeys west,
the windshield flashing pink,
pink glancing off of metal,
brushing the dented flank
of blue, beat-up enamel;

down hollows, up rises,
and waits, patient, while
a lone traveller gives
kisses and embraces
to seven relatives
and a collie supervises.

Goodbye to the elms,
to the farm, to the dog.
The bus starts. The light
grows richer; the fog,
shifting, salty, thin,
comes closing in.

Its cold, round crystals
form and slide and settle
in the white hens’ feathers,
in gray glazed cabbages,
on the cabbage roses
and lupins like apostles;

the sweet peas cling
to their wet white string
on the whitewashed fences;
bumblebees creep
inside the foxgloves,
and evening commences.

One stop at Bass River.
Then the Economies
Lower, Middle, Upper;
Five Islands, Five Houses,
where a woman shakes a tablecloth
out after supper.

A pale flickering. Gone.
The Tantramar marshes
and the smell of salt hay.
An iron bridge trembles
and a loose plank rattles
but doesn’t give way.

On the left, a red light
swims through the dark:
a ship’s port lantern.
Two rubber boots show,
illuminated, solemn.
A dog gives one bark.

A woman climbs in
with two market bags,
brisk, freckled, elderly.
“A grand night. Yes, sir,
all the way to Boston.”
She regards us amicably.

Moonlight as we enter
the New Brunswick woods,
hairy, scratchy, splintery;
moonlight and mist
caught in them like lamb’s wool
on bushes in a pasture.

The passengers lie back.
Snores. Some long sighs.
A dreamy divagation
begins in the night,
a gentle, auditory,
slow hallucination. . . .

In the creakings and noises,
an old conversation
–not concerning us,
but recognizable, somewhere,
back in the bus:
Grandparents’ voices

uninterruptedly
talking, in Eternity:
names being mentioned,
things cleared up finally;
what he said, what she said,
who got pensioned;

deaths, deaths and sicknesses;
the year he remarried;
the year (something) happened.
She died in childbirth.
That was the son lost
when the schooner foundered.

He took to drink. Yes.
She went to the bad.
When Amos began to pray
even in the store and
finally the family had
to put him away.

“Yes . . .” that peculiar
affirmative. “Yes . . .”
A sharp, indrawn breath,
half groan, half acceptance,
that means “Life’s like that.
We know it (also death).”

Talking the way they talked
in the old featherbed,
peacefully, on and on,
dim lamplight in the hall,
down in the kitchen, the dog
tucked in her shawl.

Now, it’s all right now
even to fall asleep
just as on all those nights.
–Suddenly the bus driver
stops with a jolt,
turns off his lights.

A moose has come out of
the impenetrable wood
and stands there, looms, rather,
in the middle of the road.
It approaches; it sniffs at
the bus’s hot hood.

Towering, antlerless,
high as a church,
homely as a house
(or, safe as houses).
A man’s voice assures us
“Perfectly harmless. . . .”

Some of the passengers
exclaim in whispers,
childishly, softly,
“Sure are big creatures.”
“It’s awful plain.”
“Look! It’s a she!”

Taking her time,
she looks the bus over,
grand, otherworldly.
Why, why do we feel
(we all feel) this sweet
sensation of joy?

“Curious creatures,”
says our quiet driver,
rolling his r’s.
“Look at that, would you.”
Then he shifts gears.
For a moment longer,

by craning backward,
the moose can be seen
on the moonlit macadam;
then there’s a dim
smell of moose, an acrid
smell of gasoline.

“The Fiddler of Dooney” by W.B. Yeats

When I play on my fiddle in Dooney,
Folk dance like a wave of the sea;
My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet,
My brother in Moharabuiee.

I passed my brother and cousin:
They read in their books of prayer;
I read in my book of songs
I bought at the Sligo fair.

When we come at the end of time,
To Peter sitting in state,
He will smile on the three old spirits,
But call me first through the gate;

For the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle
And the merry love to dance:

And when the folk there spy me,
They will all come up to me,
With ‘Here is the fiddler of Dooney!’
And dance like a wave of the sea.