Elizabeth Bishop

I spent a lot of my last semester of my Master's degree working with Elizabeth Bishop poems. So I want to post one of my favorites here. This probably won't be the last of her poems I put here. She's that good.

The moon in the bureau mirror
looks out a million miles
(and perhaps with pride, at herself,
but she never, never smiles)
far and away beyond sleep, or
perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.

By the Universe deserted,
she'd tell it to go to hell,
and she'd find a body of water,
or a mirror, on which to dwell.
So wrap up care in a cobweb
and drop it down the well

into that world inverted
where left is always right,
where the shadows are really the body,
where we stay awake all night,
where the heavens are shallow as the sea
is now deep, and you love me.


I had forgotten until just now that this poem existed. I forgot how good it is.