North and South Quotes

“I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,
slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
icily free above the stones,
above the stones and then the world.
If you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.
If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn form the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.”
― Elizabeth Bishop, North and South

“The shooting stars in your black hair
in bright formation
are flocking
[…]
battered and shiny like the moon.”
― Elizabeth Bishop, North and South

“freedom at last, a lifelong
dream of time and silence,
dream of protection and rest”
― Elizabeth Bishop, North and South

“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, North and South

“Now, in the evening,
a new moon comes.
The hills grow softer.”
― Elizabeth Bishop, North and South

“days are journeys round the suburbs, circles
surrounding stars, overlapping circles.”
― Elizabeth Bishop, North and South

“Every day, in the sun,
at breakfast time I sit on my balcony
with my feet up, and drink gallons of coffee.”
― Elizabeth Bishop, North and South

“now draw us into daylight in our beds;
and clear away what presses on the brain”
― Elizabeth Bishop, North and South

“the ghosts of glaciers drift
among those folds and folds of fir”
― Elizabeth Bishop, A Cold Spring