Home ⇒ 📌Elizabeth Bishop ⇒ While Someone Telephones
While Someone Telephones
Wasted, wasted minutes that couldn’t be worse,
Minutes of a barbaric condescension.
Stare out the bathroom window at the fir-trees,
At their dark needles, accretions to no purpose
Woodenly crystallized, and where two fireflies
Are only lost.
Hear nothing but a train that goes by, must go by, like tension;
Nothing. And wait:
Maybe even now these minutes’ host
Emerges, some relaxed uncondescending stranger,
The heart’s release.
And while the fireflies
Are failing to illuminate these nightmare trees
Might they not be his green gay eyes.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Related poetry:
- October O hushed October morning mild, Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild, Should waste them all. The crows above the forest call; Tomorrow they may form and go. O hushed October morning mild, Begin the hours of this day slow. Make the day seem to us less brief. Hearts […]...
- Fire-Fly City Like a long arrow through the dark the train is darting, Bearing me far away, after a perfect day of love’s delight: Wakeful with all the sad-sweet memories of parting, I lift the narrow window-shade and look out on the night. Lonely the land unknown, and like a river flowing, Forest and field and hill […]...
- The Sun On The Bookcase Once more the cauldron of the sun Smears the bookcase with winy red, And here my page is, and there my bed, And the apple-tree shadows travel along. Soon their intangible track will be run, And dusk grow strong And they have fled. Yes: now the boiling ball is gone, And I have wasted another […]...
- Lullaby Now the day is done, Now the shepherd sun Drives his white flocks from the sky; Now the flowers rest On their mother’s breast, Hushed by her low lullaby. Now the glowworms glance, Now the fireflies dance, Under fern-boughs green and high; And the western breeze To the forest trees Chants a tuneful lullaby. Now […]...
- "And with what body do they come?" “And with what body do they come?” Then they do come Rejoice! What Door What Hour Run run My Soul! Illuminate the House! “Body!” Then real a Face and Eyes To know that it is them! Paul knew the Man that knew the News He passed through Bethlehem...
- Trees Against The Sky Pines against the sky, Pluming the purple hill; Pines. . . and I wonder why, Heart, you quicken and thrill? Wistful heart of a boy, Fill with a strange sweet joy, Lifting to Heaven nigh – Pines against the sky. Palms against the sky, Failing the hot, hard blue; Stark on the beach I lie, […]...
- It Is A Spring Afternoon Everything here is yellow and green. Listen to its throat, its earthskin, The bone dry voices of the peepers As they throb like advertisements. The small animals of the woods Are carrying their deathmasks Into a narrow winter cave. The scarecrow has plucked out His two eyes like diamonds And walked into the village. The […]...
- Away, Melancholy Away, melancholy, Away with it, let it go. Are not the trees green, The earth as green? Does not the wind blow, Fire leap and the rivers flow? Away melancholy. The ant is busy He carrieth his meat, All things hurry To be eaten or eat. Away, melancholy. Man, too, hurries, Eats, couples, buries, He […]...
- In Port Out of the fires of the sunset come we again to our own We have girdled the world in our sailing under many an orient star; Still to our battered canvas the scents of the spice gales cling, And our hearts are swelling within us as we cross the harbor bar. Beyond are the dusky […]...
- Nurses Song (Experience) When the voices of children. are heard on the green And whisprings are in the dale: The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind, My face turns green and pale. Then come home my children. the sun is gone down And the dews of night arise Your spring & your day. are wasted […]...
- 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
- Roses And Rue (To L. L.) Could we dig up this long-buried treasure, Were it worth the pleasure, We never could learn love’s song, We are parted too long. Could the passionate past that is fled Call back its dead, Could we live it all over again, Were it worth the pain! I remember we used to meet […]...
- Love and a Question A stranger came to the door at eve, And he spoke the bridegroom fair. He bore a green-white stick in his hand, And, for all burden, care. He asked with the eyes more than the lips For a shelter for the night, And he turned and looked at the road afar Without a window light. […]...
- The Gardener LXXXIII: She Dwelt on the Hillside She dwelt on the hillside by edge Of a maize-field, near the spring that Flows in laughing rills through the Solemn shadows of ancient trees. The Women came there to fill their jars, And travellers would sit there to rest And talk. She worked and dreamed Daily to the tune of the bubbling Stream. One […]...
- The Castle of Mains Ancient Castle of the Mains, With your romantic scenery and surrounding plains, Which seem most beautiful to the eye, And the little rivulet running by, Which the weary traveller can drink of when he feels dry. And the heaven’s breath smells sweetly there, And scented perfumes fill the air, Emanating from the green trees and […]...
- The Sick Muse My impoverished muse, alas! What have you for me this morning? Your empty eyes are stocked with nocturnal visions, In your cheek’s cold and taciturn reflection, I see insanity and horror forming. The green succubus and the red urchin, Have they poured you fear and love from their urns? The nightmare of a mutinous fist […]...
- Dream Song 65: A freaking ankle crabbed his blissful trips A freaking ankle crabbed his blissful trips, This whiskey tastes like California But is Kentucky, Like Berkeley where he truly worked at it But nothing broke all night—no fires—one dawn, Crowding his luck, Flowed down along the cliffs to the Big Sur Where Henry Miller’s box is vomit-green And Henry bathed in sulphur Lovely, hot, […]...
- To Waken An Old Lady Old age is A flight of small Cheeping birds Skimming Bare trees Above a snow glaze. Gaining and failing They are buffeted By a dark wind- But what? On harsh weedstalks The flock has rested- The snow Is covered with broken Seed husks And the wind tempered With a shrill Piping of plenty....
- Blindness OUR true hearts are forever lonely: A wistfulness is in our thought: Our lights are like the dawns which only Seem bright to us and yet are not. Something you see in me I wis not: Another heart in you I guess: A stranger’s lips-but thine I kiss not, Erring in all my tenderness. I […]...
- Sonnet V Not undelightful, friend, our rustic ease To grateful hearts; for by especial hap, Deep nested in the hill’s enormous lap, With its own ring of walls and grove of trees, Sits, in deep shelter, our small cottage – nor Far-off is seen, rose carpeted and hung With clematis, the quarry whence she sprung, O mater […]...
- Gravelly Run I don’t know somehow it seems sufficient To see and hear whatever coming and going is, Losing the self to the victory of stones and trees, Of bending sandpit lakes, crescent Round groves of dwarf pine: For it is not so much to know the self As to know it as it is known by […]...
- In the Black Forest I lay beneath the pine trees, And looked aloft, where, through The dusky, clustered tree-tops, Gleamed rent, gay rifts of blue. I shut my eyes, and a fancy Fluttered my sense around: “I lie here dead and buried, And this is churchyard ground. “I am at rest for ever; Ended the stress and strife.” Straight […]...
- Squash in Blossom How lush, how loose, the uninhibited squash is. If ever hearts (and these immoderate leaves Are vegetable hearts) were worn on sleeves, The squash’s are. In green the squash vine gushes. The flowers are cornucopias of summer, Briefly exuberant and cheaply golden. And if they make a show of being hidden, Are open promiscuously to […]...
- The Sword of Suprise Sunder me from my bones, O sword of God Till they stand stark and strange as do the trees; That I whose heart goes up with the soaring woods May marvel as much at these. Sunder me from my blood that in the dark I hear that red ancestral river run Like branching buried floods […]...
- I Want To Die In My Own Bed All night the army came up from Gilgal To get to the killing field, and that’s all. In the ground, warf and woof, lay the dead. I want to die in My own bed. Like slits in a tank, their eyes were uncanny, I’m always the few and they are the many. I must answer. […]...
- The West Wind IT’S a warm wind, the west wind, full of birds’ cries; I never hear the west wind but tears are in my eyes. For it comes from the west lands, the old brown hills. And April’s in the west wind, and daffodils. It’s a fine land, the west land, for hearts as tired as mine, […]...
- Crystal not on my lips look for your mouth, Not in front of the gate for the stranger, Not in the eye for the tear. Seven nights higher red makes for red, Seven hearts deeper the hand knocks on the gate, Seven roses later plashes the fountain....
- Alone In The Woods Alone in the woods I felt The bitter hostility of the sky and the trees Nature has taught her creatures to hate Man that fusses and fumes Unquiet man As the sap rises in the trees As the sap paints the trees a violent green So rises the wrath of Nature’s creatures At man So […]...
- Mule Song Silver will lie where she lies Sun-out, whatever turning the world does, Longeared in her ashen, earless, Floating world: Indifferent to sores and greengage colic, Where oats need not Come to, Bleached by crystals of her trembling time: Beyond all brunt of seasons, blind Forever to all blinds, Inhabited by Brooks still she may wraith […]...
- Fletcher McGee She took my strength by the minutes, She took my life by hours, She drained me like a fevered moon That saps the spinning world. The days went by like shadows, The minutes wheeled like stars. She took the pity from my heart, And made it into smiles. She was a hunk of sculptor’s clay, […]...
- The Evening Of The Mind Now comes the evening of the mind. Here are the fireflies twitching in the blood; Here is the shadow moving down the page Where you sit reading by the garden wall. Now the dwarf peach trees, nailed to their trellises, Shudder and droop. Your know their voices now, Faintly the martyred peaches crying out Your […]...
- Florida The state with the prettiest name, The state that floats in brackish water, Held together by mangrave roots That bear while living oysters in clusters, And when dead strew white swamps with skeletons, Dotted as if bombarded, with green hummocks Like ancient cannon-balls sprouting grass. The state full of long S-shaped birds, blue and white, […]...
- To the Memory of the Brave Americans Under General Greene, in South Carolina, who fell in the action of September 8, 1781 AT Eutaw Springs the valiant died; Their limbs with dust are covered o’er Weep on, ye springs, your tearful tide; How many heroes are no more! If in this wreck or ruin, they Can yet be thought to claim a […]...
- Pilgrims For oh, when the war will be over We’ll go and we’ll look for our dead; We’ll go when the bee’s on the clover, And the plume of the poppy is red: We’ll go when the year’s at its gayest, When meadows are laughing with flow’rs; And there where the crosses are greyest, We’ll seek […]...
- The Quest I sought Him on the purple seas, I sought Him on the peaks aflame; Amid the gloom of giant trees And canyons lone I called His name; The wasted ways of earth I trod: In vain! In vain! I found not God. I sought Him in the hives of men, The cities grand, the hamlets […]...
- Goodtime Jesus Jesus got up one day a little later than usual. He had been dream- Ing so deep there was nothing left in his head. What was it? A nightmare, dead bodies walking all around him, eyes rolled Back, skin falling off. But he wasn’t afraid of that. It was a beau- Tiful day. How ’bout […]...
- The Loneliness One dare not sound The Loneliness One dare not sound And would as soon surmise As in its Grave go plumbing To ascertain the size The Loneliness whose worst alarm Is lest itself should see And perish from before itself For just a scrutiny The Horror not to be surveyed But skirted in the Dark With Consciousness suspended And […]...
- With a Bouquet of Twelve Roses I saw Lord Buddha towering by my gate Saying: “Once more, good youth, I stand and wait.” Saying: “I bring you my fair Law of Peace And from your withering passion full release; Release from that white hand that stabbed you so. The road is calling. With the wind you go, Forgetting her imperious disdain […]...
- Ears In The Turrets Hear Ears in the turrets hear Hands grumble on the door, Eyes in the gables see The fingers at the locks. Shall I unbolt or stay Alone till the day I die Unseen by stranger-eyes In this white house? Hands, hold you poison or grapes? Beyond this island bound By a thin sea of flesh And […]...
- Inscription 01 – For A Tablet At Godstow Nunnery Here Stranger rest thee! from the neighbouring towers Of Oxford, haply thou hast forced thy bark Up this strong stream, whose broken waters here Send pleasant murmurs to the listening sense: Rest thee beneath this hazel; its green boughs Afford a grateful shade, and to the eye Fair is its fruit: Stranger! the seemly fruit […]...