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.
From The Complete Poems 1927-1979 by Elizabeth Bishop, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. Copyright © 1979, 1983 by Alice Helen Methfessel.
September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her
tears.
She thinks that her equinoctial
tears
and the rain that beats on the
roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to
the child,
It's time for tea now; but
the child
is watching the teakettle's small
hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black
stove,
the way the rain must dance on
the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac
on its string. Birdlike, the
almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown
tears.
She shivers and says she thinks
the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood
in the stove.
It was to be, says the Marvel
Stove.
I know what I know, says
the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a
rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then
the child
puts in a man with buttons like
tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.
But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons falls down like
tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front
of the house.
Time to plant tears, says
the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous
stove
and the child draws another inscrutable
house.
--Elizabeth Bishop