English Poetry. Elizabeth Bishop. Insomnia. Элизабет Бишоп.

Elizabeth Bishop (Элизабет Бишоп)

Insomnia

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.

Elizabeth Bishop’s other poems:

1. At the Fishhouses
2. Roosters
3. Manners
4. Squatter’s Children
5. The Man-Moth

Poems of other poets with the same name (Стихотворения других поэтов с таким же названием):

Dante Rossetti (Данте Россетти) Insomnia (“Thin are the night-skirts left behind”)

Madison Cawein (Мэдисон Кавейн) Insomnia (“It seems that dawn will never climb”)

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