Elizabeth Bishop - Quotes

Fish - fight

He didn’t fight. / He hadn’t faught at all.

Fish - Venerable

He hung a grunting weight, / battered abd venerable / and homely.

Fish - Wallpaper

Here and there / his brown skin hung in strips / like ancient wallpaper

Fish - lice

infested / with tiny white sea-lice

Fish - Bladder

the pink swim-bladder / like a big peony.

Fish - Mechanism

I admired his sullen face, / the mechanism of his jaw,

Fish - Five Hooks

five big hooks / grown firmly in his mouth.

Fish - Ache

his aching jaw

Fish - Victory

I stared and stared / and victory filled up / the little rented boat, / from the pool of bilge / where oil had spread a rainbow

Fish - Rainbow!

until everything / was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow! / And I let the fish go.

The Prodigal - Odor

The brown enormous odor he lived by / was too close, with its breathing and thick hair. / for him to judge.

The Prodigal - Glaze, Endure

The sunrise glazed the barnyard mud with red; / the burning puddles seemed to reassure. / And then he thought he almost might endure / his exile yet another year or more.

The Armadillo - Light

the paper chambers flush and fill with light / that comes and goes, like hearts

The Armadillo - egg

It splattered like an egg of fire / against the cliff behind the house. / The flame ran down. We saw the pair

The Armadillo - Rabbit

a baby rabbit … / … / So soft! - a handful of intangible ash / with fixed, ignited eyes.

The Armadillo - Dream

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

Sestina - Intro

September rain falls on the house. / In the failing light, the old grandmother / sits in the kitchen with the child

Sestina - Hovers

Birdlike, the almanac / hovers half open above the child, / hovers above the grandmother

Sestina - Rigid

the child draws a rigid house / and a winding pathway. Then the child / puts in a man with buttons like tears

Sestina - Outro

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

FDINS - Line 1

In the cold, cold parlour

FDINS - Bullet

Since Uncle Arthur fired / a bullet into him, / he hadn’t said a word.

FDINS - Cake

Arthur’s coffin was / a little frosted cake

FDINS - Royals

The gracious royal couples / were warm in red and ermine; / their feet were well wrapped up / in the ladies’ ermine trains.

FDINS - Lily

But how could Arthur go, / clutching his tiny lily, / with his eyes shut up so tight, / and the roads deep in snow