A Miracle for Breakfast, by Elizabeth Bishop
February 16th 2009 21:11
At six o'clock we were waiting for coffee,
waiting for coffee and the charitable crumb
that was going to be served from a certain balcony
--like kings of old, or like a miracle.
It was still dark. One foot of the sun
steadied itself on a long ripple in the river.
The first ferry of the day had just crossed the river.
It was so cold we hoped that the coffee
would be very hot, seeing that the sun
was not going to warm us; and that the crumb
would be a loaf each, buttered, by a miracle.
At seven a man stepped out on the balcony.
He stood for a minute alone on the balcony
looking over our heads toward the river.
A servant handed him the makings of a miracle,
consisting of one lone cup of coffee
and one roll, which he proceeded to crumb,
his head, so to speak, in the clouds--along with the sun.
Was the man crazy? What under the sun
was he trying to do, up there on his balcony!
Each man received one rather hard crumb,
which some flicked scornfully into the river,
and, in a cup, one drop of the coffee.
Some of us stood around, waiting for the miracle.
I can tell what I saw next; it was not a miracle.
A beautiful villa stood in the sun
and from its doors came the smell of hot coffee.
In front, a baroque white plaster balcony
added by birds, who nest along the river,
--I saw it with one eye close to the crumb--
and galleries and marble chambers. My crumb
my mansion, made for me by a miracle,
through ages, by insects, birds, and the river
working the stone. Every day, in the sun,
at breakfast time I sit on my balcony
with my feet up, and drink gallons of coffee.
We licked up the crumb and swallowed the coffee.
A window across the river caught the sun
as if the miracle were working, on the wrong balcony.
This is a sestina, though a loosely metered one. It follows all the conventions of traditional sestinas except for the iambic pentameter, but the deviation from that norm worked well for this poem. It's a sort of narrative poem, which I think the sestina is best for--a narrative with a surface meaning and many other possible layers of meaning.
I felt, with my Christian leanings in everything, that the crumb and coffee could be symbolic of the Eucharist, the Lord's Supper. From that understanding, I make sense of the rest of the poem in a religious sort of way. I'm sure other people have other interpretations of the poem from which they make their own sense of the poem, and all those are valid, too.
As far as the Eucharist goes, to me it seems the poem has a sort of sarcastic or negative view of Christianity or perhaps just the notion of Eucharist. The miracle of the Eucharist, for Christians in general, is that it represents (or in some beliefs, concretizes) the presence of Christ in the event. It feels to me that the ending of the poem represents what many people feel is the futility of religion, or a turning away from it. I don't know a lot about Bishop's religious life other than that eventually she did convert, but that she wrote poetry in both eras of her life. I'm inclined to think that this was a poem from the nonreligious era.
One other thing I like about this poem is her fresh and vivid imagery. "One foot of the sun / steadied itself on a long ripple in the river" is a great, idiosyncratic way of saying "the sun was coming up." It's really hard to be fresh and original in poetry or any other kind of writing, especially concerning description. But here she said what was happening--the sun was rising--but said it in a way that was not only fresh and original, but also tied in with the poem quite well. It's really tough to make description do that: both be interesting and vivid and also energize and inform your writing.
One thing about sestinas is that you have to have your own way of writing them. Some people are able to just take 6 random words--with one of which each line of the poem ends--and construct a good poem around them. Other people, like me, have to put a great deal of thought into those 6 words, since they are the hinge upon which the rest of the poem turns. And some people have to write the tornada--the 3-line stanza containing 2 of the 6 keywords in each line--first. I think it's better to write the first stanza first, and then work from there, not thinking prior about what words to use or whatever; just write a 6-line stanza/poem, and go from there. I don't think it's smart to write the tornada first, because it's supposed to be the end of the poem and therefore informed by what came before it. The tornada is not a poem in itself, but rather it's the capstone of the poetic archway that is the sestina. Think of it as the heroic couplet that ends a sonnet: the sonnet isn't a sonnet without it, and that couplet can't stand on it's own, because it wouldn't make any sense.
I'm still plugging away at my rhymed double-sestina, which I'll share here as soon as it's done and presentable. Still no word on the poems I submitted for publication, but they take forever to respond, so patience is key. Have a good day everyone!
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