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elizabeth bishop – brazil, january 1, 1502 lyrics

januaries, nature greets our eyes
exactly as she must have greeted theirs:
every square inch filling in with foliage––
big leaves, little leaves, and giant leaves
blue, blue+green, and olive
with occasional lighter veins and edges
or a satin underleaf turned over;
monster fernsin silver+gray relief
and flowers, too, like giant water lilies
up in the air––up, rather, in the leaves––
purple, yellow, two yellows, pink
rust red and greenish white;
solid but airy; fresh as if just finished
and taken off the frame

a blue+white sky, a simple web
backing for feathery detail:
brief arcs, a pale+green broken wheel
a few palms, swarthy, squat, but delicate;
and perching there in profile, beaks agape
the big symbolic birds keep quiet
each showing only half his puffed and padded
pure+colored or spotted breast
still in the foreground there is sin:
five sooty dragons near some massy rocks
the rocks are worked with lichens, gray moonbursts
splattered and overlapping
threatened from underneath by moss
in lovely h+ll+green flames
attacked above
by scaling+ladder vines, oblique and neat
“one leaf yes and one leaf no” (in portuguese)
the lizards scarcely breathe; all eye
sare on the smaller, female one, back+to
her wicked tail straight up and over
red as a red+hot wire
just so the christians, hard as nails
tiny as nails, glinting
in creaking armor, came and found it all
not unfamiliar:
no lovers’ walks, no bowers
no cherries to be picked, no lute music
but corresponding, nevertheless
to an old dream of wealth and luxury
already out of style when they left home––
wealth, plus a brand+new pleasure
directly after mass, humming perhaps
l’homme armé or some such tune
they ripped away into the hanging fabric
each out to catch an indian for himself––
those maddening little women who kept calling
calling to each other (or had the birds waked up?)
and retreating, always retreating, behind it

- elizabeth bishop lyrics

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