All entries for Wednesday 28 March 2007
March 28, 2007
'Suicide of a Moderate Dictator' by Elizabeth Bishop
For Carlos Lacerda
This is a day when truths will out, perhaps;
leak from the dangling telephone ear-phones
sapping the festooned switchboard’s strength;
fall from the windows, blow from off the sills,
—the vague, slight unremarkable contents
of emptying ash-trays; rub off on our fingers
like ink from un-proof-read newspapers,
crocking the way the unfocused photographs
of crooked faces do that soil our coats,
our tropical-weight coats, like slapped-at moths.
—
Today’s a day when those who work
are idling. Those who played must work
and hurry, too, to get it done,
with little dignity or none.
The newspapers are sold; the kiosk shutters
crash down. But anyway, in the night
the headlines wrote themselves, see, on the streets
and sidewalks everywhere; a sediment’s splashed
even to the first floor of apartment houses.
—
This is a day that’s beautiful as well,
and warm and clear. At seven o’ clock I saw
the dogs being walked along the famous beach
as usual, in a shiny gray-green dawn,
leaving their paw prints draining in the wet.
The line of breakers was steady and the pinkish,
segmented rainbow steadily hung above it.
At eight two little boys were flying kites.
28 Mar 2007 18:41
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Tags: Latin America
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