Crusoe in England

The wind and the waves, towns growing in shallow rock, elms that take their sweet, eek and eek and not of this world; weather all over the world, understand and reach out like the ultimate measure of stone. Who is out there again, as each wave as at long last can take each one and put on idle while he sleeps, still reading how each salt comes back, a feather, a hand, a butterfly.

• Elizabeth Bishop

• Elizabeth Bishop