Sestina

September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,

It's time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle's small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac

on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.

It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.

But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house. 

Elizabeth Bishop

aus: Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969, New York

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. 

Elizabeth Bishop

aus: Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969, New York

Letter to N.Y.

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 ohter 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 a 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 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 buildings 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.

Elizabeth Bishop

aus: Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969, New York

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.

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.

Elizabeth Bishop
from: Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969, New York

The Map

Land lies in water; it is shadowed green.

Shadows, or are they shallows, as its edges

showing the line of long sea-weed ledges

where weeds hang to the simple blue from green.

Or does the land lean down to lift the sea from under,

drwaing it unperturbed around itself?

Along the fine tan sandy shelf

is the land tugging at the sea from under?

The shadow of Newfoundland lies flat and still.

Labrador's yellow, where the moony Eskimo

has oiled it. We can stroke these lovely bays,

under a glass as if they were expected to blossom,

or as if to provide a clean cage for invisible fish.

The names of seashore towns run out to sea,

the names of cities cross the neighboring mountains

- the printer here experiencing the same excitement

as when emotion too far exceeds its cause.

Theese peninsulas take the water between thumb and finger

like women feeling for the smoothness of yard-goods.

Mapped waters are more quiet than the land is,

lending the land their waves' own conformation:

and Norway's hare runs south in agitation,

profiles investigate the sea, where land land is.

Are they assigned, or can the countries pick their colors?

- What suits the character of the native waters best.

Topography displays no favorites; North's as near as West.

More delicate than the historians' are the map-makers' colors.

Elizabeth Bishop

from: Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems, American Book - Stratford Press, 1969, New Jersey

Die Kunst des Verlierens

Die Kunst des Verlierens studiert man täglich.

So vieles scheint bloß geschaffen, um verloren zu gehen und so ist sein Verlust nicht unerträglich.

Lerne zu verlieren, Tag für Tag.

Akzeptiere den Aufruhr um Schlüssel, die du verlierst.

Ich verlor zwei Städte, verlor zwei Flüsse, einen Kontinent.

Ich vermisse sie, aber es war nicht unerträglich.

Selbst dich zu verlieren, deine scherzhaften Worte;

eine Geste, die ich liebe.

Sogar hier wird es wahr sein.

Ich werde sehen, die Kunst des Verlierens studiert man täglich.

Auch wenn es einem vorkommt, als wär's (schreib's auf!) 

als wär's unerträglich.

Elizabeth Bishop

Ich denke, zu diesem Filmjuwel brauche ich nichts zu schreiben...