1. |
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Love with his gilded bow and crystal arrows
has slain us all, has pierced the English sparrows
who languished for each other in the dust,
while from their bosoms, puffed with hopeless lust,
the red drops fall.
The robins’ wings fan fev’rish arcs and swirls
attempting hugs, while Venus pats her darling’s curls
and just to polish off his aim, suggests
some unrequited passions in the breasts
of am’rous bugs.
See, up there, pink and plumb and smug in sashes,
the little bastards grin, watching the pretty rainbows on his lashes …
Oh sweet, sweet love - go kick thy naughty self
around the clouds, or prick thy naughty self
upon a gilded pin.
Elizabeth Bishop
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2. |
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In the middle of the road there was a stone
there was a stone in the middle of the road
there was a stone
in the middle of the road there was a stone.
Never should I forget this event
in the life of my fatigued retinas.
Never should I forget that in the middle of the road
there was a stone
there was a stone in the middle of the road
in the middle of the road there was a stone.
Carlos Drummond de Andrade
Translated from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Bishop.
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3. |
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Now a conundrum Love propounds my heart:
You with himself my Love confounds with perfect art.
Until I swear I cannot tell you two apart.
One year ago too well I knew dissimilarity
between my foolish Love and you. What charity
from you, or Love, made up my Love’s disparity?
Into your image now my Love has grown your size,
and even every feature like. I own surprise
to meet, when I meet you - or Love - your eyes.
Nor does an eyelash differ; nor a hair but’s shaped exactly
to you I love, and warns me to beware my dubious security,
sure of my love, and Love; uncertain of identity.
But poor Love’s imitation’s made him mute in his perfection.
Announced to you, upon your most minute inspection
you’d think but that you met your own reflection.
Such curious Love, in constant innocence, though ill at lease,
Admits, between you and himself, no difference and no degrees …
I sometimes pride me onLove’s limitations, they being these.
Elizabeth Bishop
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4. |
Interlude - My Last Poem
01:56
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I would like my last poem thus
That it be gentle saying the simplest and least intended things
That it be ardent like a tearless sob
That it have the beauty of almost scentless flowers
The purity of the flame in which the most limpid diamonds are consumed
The passion of suicides who kill themselves without explanation.
Manuel Bandeira
Translated from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Bishop
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5. |
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Love is feathered like a bird
to keep him warm,
to keep him safe from harm,
And by what winds or drafts his nest is stirred
they chill not Love.
Warm lives he:
No warmth gives off,
or none to me.
Claws he has like any hawk
to clutch and keep,
to clutch so he may sleep
while round the red heart’s perch his claws can lock
and fasten Love.
His hold he’ll not resign,
nor from the heart fall off,
or not from mine.
At nights the grackle Love will start
to shriek and shrill,
nor will he once be still
till he has wide awake the backward heart.
So selfish Love,
Go hush;
Feathers and claws take off
or seek some bush.
Elizabeth Bishop
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6. |
Postlude - The Reprimand
05:08
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The Reprimand
If you taste tears too often, inquisitive tongue,
you’ll find they’ve something you’d not reckoned on;
Crept childish out to touch eye’s own phenomenon,
return, into your element.
Tears belong to only eyes; their deepest sorry they wrung from water.
Where wept water’s gone that residue is sorrow, salt and wan,
your bitter enemy, who leaves the face white-strung.
Tears, taster, have a dignity in display,
carry an antidotal gift for drying.
Unsuited to a savoring by the way,
salt puckers tear-drops up, ends crying.
Oh curious, cracked and chapped, now will you say,
Tongue, “Grief’s not mine” and bend yourself to sighing?
Elizabeth Bishop
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Thomas Oboe Lee Cambridge, Massachusetts
Thomas Oboe Lee was born in China in 1945. He lived in São Paulo, Brazil, for six years before coming to the United States in 1966. After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, he studied composition at the New England Conservatory and Harvard University. He has been a member of the music faculty at Boston College since 1990. ... more
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