Elizabeth Bishop – One Art

Elizabeth Bishop
One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

– Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

•

I don’t have much to say these days, I have been using most of my words to myself, and eating them alone selfishly. Blame it on the mind that worries about the uncontrollable and uncertain future. Blame it on the paperworks and Kafka-esque inhumane bureaucratic puzzles, blame it on my hunger for solitude, blame it on side walk that purrs under my feet and demands me to feed it my words with my own hands…  But I have a couple of questions, nonetheless. Like, what have you lost today? or did you lose anything yesterday, or day before? or do you live a life that you are more susceptible to losing things, names, places? Do you lose yourself? Wanna go lose something with me? how do you do that?

I, sometimes, feel like I do it too much, I lose too much and too often….and this worries me.. maybe I just have decided to live a life that many things in it are worrisome – you know the thrill.. but then there’s forgetting the pain, there’s accepting,  there’s being, there’s the open space made available, because I have lost something. There’s more, there’s your head resting on a chest, there’s deliciousness of the air, there’s a smile of a stranger, there’s a smile of a lover, there’s touch – oh the touch, how lonely is the world without the touch, and if everything is lost, there’s poetry – hidden in that – awaiting its rise.

oh well… I came here to tell ya things and give you poetry.. Instead I wrote this dumb ass rantc(at least the poem is good).. I guess this is also form of allowing myself to lose things… you can’t master an art without failing, no?

X’s & O’s