As you all know, tonight a new volcano has erupted. Although it is a cold evening hot ash creeps down its uneven orifice hardening what was once a loved, a celebrated hill into unbreathing slopes of breast. It was cold and windy, scarcely the day, yet it was the hour when night makes the mountains lament. So as from a magician’s midnight sleeve all heaven and earth made love to itself, wailing darkness. Dead birds fell, but no one had seen them fly. New fireborn land now lies in water, Half squatter, half tenant (no rent), it is coast and its creator. It makes park first and the shaking Aspen leaves are eyelids, lying and lifting. Where there were once too many waterfalls— the crowded streams so tiresome, always shrieking!— land tries to build a harbor, withdrawing water to still the falls explosions on the rocks. Instead, it walls off a swimming-pool where Inside the water lies perfectly flat. Of course I may be remembering it all wrong. Remembering, say, the Strait of Belle Isle or Rio de Janeiro, with its stray cemeteries and children. Are those of you seated in the back able to get A good enough view of the volcano? You should be seeing eyeless storm roam an uneasy sky, ash sinking above endless and flooded above.
The Lifeboat
For and After Elizabeth Bishop