Elizabeth Bishop: A Poem to Wake Up To

One of the joys of having finally turned into my publisher a big non-fiction book is that I can return to poetry and I have just come across a glorious (untitled) poem by Elizabeth Bishop written some time in the late 1930s and published for the first time in Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose and Letters which came out last year in the Library of America series.

Here is the opening stanza:

It is marvellous to wake up together

At the same minute; marvellous to hear

The rain begin suddenly all over the roof,

To feel the air suddenly clear

As if electricity had passed through it

From a black mesh of wires in the sky.

All over the roof the rain hisses,

And below, the light falling of kisses.

Read on p217ff