Friday, November 16, 2007

One Art

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.

Elizabeth Bishop (1969)

2 comments:

Trebuchet said...

thou art a master
dishing out pasta

xinhui said...

The art of losing isn't hard to master -
it comes so naturally to us
Singaporeans who think that
winning is all that matters.

We become so focused on the prize
we shoot our own eye and
the bull in the shop
breaks the China
spells disaster with a
capital D

So I scratch my head and
wonder why I am thought of as a
holy cow, rather than a
Mackerel or an
innocent lamb, or even a
giraffe that had its
long neck cut off

(to be continued)