Poem of the month

selected by David Underdown, who supplies the footnote

Late Air

by Elizabeth Bishop

From a magician’s midnight sleeve
the radio-singers
distribute all their love-songs
over the dew-wet lawns.
And like a fortune-teller’s
their marrow-piercing guesses are whatever you believe.

But on the Navy Yard aerial I find
better witnesses
for love on summer nights.
Five remote red lights
keep their nests there; Phoenixes
burning quietly, where the dew cannot climb.

Elizabeth Bishop was born in Massachusetts in 1911 but brought up by her grandparents in Nova Scotia after her mother was consigned to a mental hospital. She led a restless and unconventional life forming strong associations with, amongst others, Marianne Moore and Robert Lowell. This poem taken from her first collection ‘North and South’ can be found in her marvellous ‘Complete Poems’. It shows her trademark wit – the fortune teller’s guesses being ‘whatever you believe’, the ‘Phoenixes burning quietly’, and uses arresting imagery – the red lights that ‘keep their nests’ on the Navy Yard aerial.