For Elizabeth Bishop

The child I left your class to have Later had a habit of sleeping With her arms around a globe She’d unscrewed, dropped, and dented. I always felt she could possess it, The pink countries and the mauve And the ocean which got to keep its blue. Coming from the Southern Hemisphere to teach, Which you had never had to do, you took A bare-walled room, alone, its northern Windowscapes as gray as walls. To decorate, you’d only brought a black madonna. I thought you must have skipped summer that year, Southern winter, southern spring, then north For winter over again. Still, it pleased you To take credit for introducing us, And later to bring our daughter a small flipbook Of partners dancing, and a ring With a secret whistle. —All are Broken now like her globe, but she remembers Them as I recall the black madonna Facing you across the room so that In a way you had the dark fertile life You were always giving gifts to. Your smaller admirer off to school, I take the globe and roll it away: where On it now is someone like you?