April 27, 2006: Crusoe in England, Elizabeth Bishop
Crusoe in England
Elizabeth Bishop
A new volcano has erupted,
the papers say, and last week I was reading
where some ship saw an island being born:
at first a breath of steam, ten miles away;
and then a black fleck—basalt probably—
rose in the mate’s binoculars
and caught on the horizon like a fly.
They named it. But my poor old island’s still
un-rediscovered, un-renamable.
None of the books has ever got it right.
…
Dreams were the worst. Of course I dreamed of food
and love, but they were pleasant rather
than otherwise. But then I’d dream of things
like slitting a baby’s throat, mistaking it
for a baby goat. I’d have
nightmares of other islands
stretching away from mine, infinities
of islands, islands spawning islands,
like frogs’ eggs turning into polliwogs
of islands, knowing that I had to live
on each and every one, eventually,
for ages, registering their flora,
their fauna, their geography.
Just when I thought I couldn’t stand it
another minute longer, Friday came.
(Accounts of that have everything all wrong.)
Friday was nice.
Friday was nice, and we were friends.
If only he had been a woman!
I wanted to propagate my kind,
and so did he, I think, poor boy.
He’d pet the baby goats sometimes,
and race with them, or carry one around.
—Pretty to watch; he had a pretty body.
And then one day they came and took us off.
Now I live here, another island,
that doesn’t seem like one, but who decides?
My blood was full of them; my brain
bred islands. But that archipelago
has petered out. I’m old.
I’m bored too, drinking my real tea,
surrounded by uninteresting lumber.
The knife there on the shelf—
it reeked of meaning, like a crucifix.
It lived. How many years did I
beg it, implore it, not to break?
I knew each nick and scratch by heart,
the bluish blade, the broken tip,
the lines of wood-grain in the handle…
Now it won’t look at me at all.
The living soul has dribbled away.
My eyes rest on it and pass on.
The local museum’s asked me to
leave everything to them:
the flute, the knife, the shrivelled shoes,
my shedding goatskin trousers
(moths have got in the fur),
the parasol that took me such a time
remembering the way the ribs should go.
It still will work but, folded up
looks like a plucked and skinny fowl.
How can anyone want such things?
—And Friday, my dear Friday, died of measles
seventeen years ago come March.
[This is only part of the full poem — if you’d like to read it all,
it’s online here. I love how Elizabeth Bishop brings
Robinson Crusoe to life, gives him this conversational,
wistful voice, and examines what happens after the
story has ended. So fascinating and sad, and the idea of Crusoe who
reads newspapers and lives an ordinary life somehow makes him seem so
much more real. My favorites are the lines the poem seems to build
to, but which at the same time seem to stand so alone: “—Pretty to
watch; he had a pretty body.” And the way the parts that mean the
most are so matter-of-fact and hide so much: “And then one day they
came and took us off.” And those killer last two lines.
Other (shorter!) Bishop poems you might like:
— Letter to N.Y., Elizabeth Biship
— Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop]
A YEAR AGO TODAY: Dream Song 1, John Berryman
