“From the Country to the City”
- PICKED BY HANNEKE-
March 2022
Revisiting Elizabeth Bishop’s mesmerizing and magical work in search of some solace and reflection on the depth of situated and everyday perspectives, Hanneke came across this little gem. It is from the collection North and South from 1964. Bishop, a master of meticulous form and of rendering the power of silence into language – an observation I take from Octavio Paz - spent most of her life “picking along the coast lines of the world” as she put it in her acceptance speech for the Neustadt International prize in 1976. Her perspective on liminal spaces and their relation to loss and homeliness is always fresh. In this poem, Bishop, hailing from Massachusetts and Nova Scotia, picks at the centrality of the city from the perspective of the country.
“The long, long legs,
League-boots of land, that carry the city nowhere,
Nowhere; the lines
That we drive on (the satin-stripes on harlequin’s
Trousers, tights);
His tough trunk dressed in tatters, scribbled over with
Nonsensical signs;
His shadowy, tall dunce-cap; and best of all his
Shows and sights,
His brain appears, throned in “fantastic triumph,”
And shines through his hat
With jewelled works at work at intermeshing crowns,
Lamé with lights.
As we approach, wickedest clown, your heart and head,
We can see that
Glittering arrangement of your brain consists, now,
Of mermaid-like,
Seated, ravishing sirens, each waving her hand-mirror;
And we start at
Series of slight disturbances up in the telephone wires
On the turnpike.
Flocks of short, shining wires seem to be flying sidewise.
Are they birds?
They flash again. No. They are vibrations of the tuning-fork
You hold and strike
Against the mirror-frames, then draw for miles, your dreams,
Out country-wards.
We bring a message from the long black length of body:
”Subside,” it begs and begs.”