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Caught -- the bubble in the spirit level, a creature divided; and the compass needle wobbling and wavering, undecided. Freed -- the broken thermometer's mercury running away; and the rainbow-bird from the narrow bevel of the empty mirror, flying wherever it feels like, gay! Elizabeth Bishop |
| Though she had been in relatively good health at the time she wrote "Sonnet," dying seemed increasingly on her mind. In these lines from another unpublished love poem, "Breakfast Song," from 1974, she wrote: |
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Last night I slept with you. Today I love you so how can I bear to go (as soon I must, I know) to bed with ugly death in that cold, filthy place, to sleep there without you, without the easy breath and nightlong, limblong warmth I've grown accustomed to? Nobody wants to die; tell me it is a lie! But no, I know it's true. It's just the common case; there's nothing one can do. |
