Letter To NY
For Louise
In your next letter I wish you'd saywhere you are going and what you are doing;how are the plays and after the playswhat other pleasures you're pursuing:taking cabs in the middle of the night,driving as if to save your soulwhere the road goes round and round the parkand the meter glares like a moral owl,and the trees look so queer and greenstanding alone in big black cavesand suddenly you're in a different placewhere 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 dimand it gets so terribly late,and coming out of the brownstone houseto the gray sidewalk, the watered street,one side of the buildings rises with the sunlike a glistening field of wheat.—Wheat, not oats, dear.
I'm afraidif it's wheat it's none of your sowing, nevertheless I'd like to knowwhat you are doing and where you are going.
Elizabeth Bishop
Other author posts
A Prodigal
The brown enormous odor he lived bywas too close, with its breathing and thick hair,for him to judge The floor was rotten; the stywas plastered halfway up with glass-smooth dung Light-lashed, self-righteous, above moving snouts,the pigs'...
Rain Towards Morning
The great light cage has broken up in the air, freeing, I think, about a million birds whose wild ascending shadows will not be back, and all the wires come falling down No cage, no frightening birds; the rain is brightening now The...
Five Flights Up
Still dark The unknown bird sits on his usual branch The little dog next door barks in his sleepinquiringly, just once Perhaps in his sleep, too, the bird inquiresonce or twice, quavering
Songs for a Colored Singer
IA washing hangs upon the line, but it's not mine None of the things that I can see belong to me The neighbors got a radio with an aerial; we got a little portable They got a lot of closet space; we got a suitcase