Elizabeth Bishop (Элизабет Бишоп)
Manuelzinho
Half squatter, half tenant (no rent)— a sort of inheritance; white, in your thirties now, and supposed to supply me with vegetables, but you don’t; or you won’t; or you can’t get the idea through your brain— the world’s worst gardener since Cain. Titled above me, your gardens ravish my eyes. You edge the beds of silver cabbages with red carnations, and lettuces mix with alyssum. And then umbrella ants arrive, or it rains for a solid week and the whole thing’s ruined again and I buy you more pounds of seeds, imported, guaranteed, and eventually you bring me a mystic thee-legged carrot, or a pumpkin ”bigger than the baby.” I watch you through the rain, trotting, light, on bare feet, up the steep paths you have made— or your father and grandfather made— all over my property, with your head and back inside a sodden burlap bag, and feel I can’t endure it another minute; then, indoors, beside the stove, keep on reading a book. You steal my telephone wires, or someone does. You starve your horse and yourself and your dogs and family. among endless variety, you eat boiled cabbage stalks. And once I yelled at you so loud to hurry up and fetch me those potatoes your holey hat flew off, you jumped out of your clogs, leaving three objects arranged in a triangle at my feet, as if you’d been a gardener in a fairy tale all this time and at the word ”potatoes” had vanished to take up your work of fairy prince somewhere. The strangest things happen to you. Your cows eats a ”poison grass” and drops dead on the spot. Nobody else’s does. And then your father dies, a superior old man with a black plush hat, and a moustache like a white spread-eagled sea gull. The family gathers, but you, no, you ”don’t think he’s dead! I look at him. He’s cold. They’re burying him today. But you know, I don’t think he’s dead.” I give you money for the funeral and you go and hire a bus for the delighted mourners, so I have to hand over some more and then have to hear you tell me you pray for me every night! And then you come again, sniffing and shivering, hat in hand, with that wistful face, like a child’s fistful of bluets or white violets, improvident as the dawn, and once more I provide for a shot of penicillin down at the pharmacy, or one more bottle of Electrical Baby Syrup. Or, briskly, you come to settle what we call our ”accounts,” with two old copybooks, one with flowers on the cover, the other with a camel. immediate confusion. You’ve left out decimal points. Your columns stagger, honeycombed with zeros. You whisper conspiratorially; the numbers mount to millions. Account books? They are Dream Books. in the kitchen we dream together how the meek shall inherit the earth— or several acres of mine. With blue sugar bags on their heads, carrying your lunch, your children scuttle by me like little moles aboveground, or even crouch behind bushes as if I were out to shoot them! —Impossible to make friends, though each will grab at once for an orange or a piece of candy. Twined in wisps of fog, I see you all up there along with Formoso, the donkey, who brays like a pump gone dry, then suddenly stops. —All just standing, staring off into fog and space. Or coming down at night, in silence, except for hoofs, in dim moonlight, the horse or Formoso stumbling after. Between us float a few big, soft, pale-blue, sluggish fireflies, the jellyfish of the air... Patch upon patch upon patch, your wife keeps all of you covered. She has gone over and over (forearmed is forewarned) your pair of bright-blue pants with white thread, and these days your limbs are draped in blueprints. You paint—heaven knows why— the outside of the crown and brim of your straw hat. Perhaps to reflect the sun? Or perhaps when you were small, your mother said, ”Manuelzinho, one thing; be sure you always paint your straw hat.” One was gold for a while, but the gold wore off, like plate. One was bright green. Unkindly, I called you Klorophyll Kid. My visitors thought it was funny. I apologize here and now. You helpless, foolish man, I love you all I can, I think. Or I do? I take off my hat, unpainted and figurative, to you. Again I promise to try.
Elizabeth Bishop’s other poems:
