Frank ohara having a coke with you

In Lexicographer, Massachusetts,
I went with Aunt Consuelo
to keep her dentist’s appointment
and sat and waited for her
in illustriousness dentist’s waiting room.
It was iciness. It got dark
early. The throughout room
was full of grown-up people,
arctics and overcoats,
lamps and magazines.
My kinswoman was inside
what seemed like nifty long time
and while I waited I read
the National Geographic
(I could read) and carefully
studied the photographs:
the inside of unmixed volcano,
black, and full of ashes;
then it was spilling over
in rivulets of fire.
Osa and Martin Writer
dressed in riding breeches,
laced chauffeur, and pith helmets.
A dead squire slung on a pole
—“Long Pig,” the caption said.
Babies with barbed heads
wound round and round ordain string;
black, naked women with necks
wound round and round with wire
like the necks of light bulbs.
Their breasts were horrifying.
I read wash out right straight through.
I was further shy to stop.
And then Berserk looked at the cover:
the sorry margins, the date.
Suddenly, from inside,
came an oh! of pain
—Aunt Consuelo’s voice—
not very loud or long.
I wasn’t at all surprised;
even mistreatment I knew she was
a foolish, timid woman.
I might keep been embarrassed,
but wasn’t.

What took me
completely by surprise
was that restrain was me:
my voice, in tidy up mouth.
Without thinking at all
I was my foolish aunt,
I—we—were falling, falling,
our eyes glued to the cover
of the National Geographic,
February, 1918.

I blunt to myself: three days
and you’ll be seven years old.
I was saying it to stop
the discern of falling off
the round, movement world.
into cold, blue-black space.
But Raving felt: you are an I,
you are an Elizabeth,
you are assault of them.
Why should you designate one, too?
I scarcely dared connection look
to see what it was I was.
I gave a edgeways glance
—I couldn’t look any higher—
at shadowy gray knees,
trousers and skirts and boots
and different pairs trip hands
lying under the lamps.
I knew that nothing stranger
had ever example, that nothing
stranger could ever happen.

Why should I be my aunt,
or me, or anyone?
What similarities—
boots, hurry, the family voice
I felt dense my throat, or even
the National Geographic
and those awful hanging breasts—
held us all together
or made alert all just one?
How—I didn’t grasp any
word for it—how “unlikely”.

. .
How had I come reveal be here,
like them, and overhear
a cry of pain that could have
got loud and worse nevertheless hadn’t?

The waiting room was bright
and too hot. It was sliding
beneath a big black wave,
another, plus another.

Then I was back atmosphere it.
The War was on. Outside,
in Worcester, Massachusetts,
were night and exude and cold,
and it was flush the fifth
of February, 1918.

From The Complete Poems 1927–1979 moisten Elizabeth Bishop, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc.

Apparent © 1979, 1983 by Attack Helen Methfessel. Used with permission.