Elizabeth Bishop (8 February 1911 – 6 October 1979 / Worcester, Massachusetts)
Poems by Elizabeth Bishop : 33 / 69
O breath
Beneath that loved and celebrated breast,
silent, bored really blindly veined,
grieves, maybe lives and lets
live, passes bets,
something moving but invisibly,
and with what clamor why restrained
I cannot fathom even a ripple.
(See the thin flying of nine black hairs
four around one five the other nipple,
flying almost intolerably on your own breath.)
Equivocal, but what we have in common's bound to be there,
whatever we must own equivalents for,
something that maybe I could bargain with
and make a separate peace beneath
within if never with.
Elizabeth Bishop
Submitted: Friday, January 03, 2003
Read poems about / on: peace
Poems by Elizabeth Bishop : 33 / 69
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