Elizabeth Bishop (1911 – 1979)
Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950.
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Why should I be my aunt,
or me, or anyone?
What similarities
boots, hands, the family voice
I felt in my throat, or even
the National Geographic
and those awful hanging breasts
held us all together
or made us all just one?
The armored cars of dreams contrived to let us do
so many a dangerous thing.
Topography displays no favorites; North's as near as West.
More delicate than the historians' are the map-makers' colors.
The ancient owls' nest must have burned.
Hastily, all alone,
a glistening armadillo left the scene,
rose-flecked, head down, tail down
From a magician's midnight sleeve
the radio-singers
distribute all their love-songs
over the dew-wet lawns.
The big fish tubs are completely lined
with layers of beautiful herring scales
and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered
with creamy iridescent coats of mail,
with small iridescent flies crawling on them.
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