poetry for breakfast

 

April 24, 2015

 

 

Elizabeth Bishop (USA, 1911-1979)

 

 

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 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 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 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 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.