Poetry Slam!: "The Monument" by Elizabeth Bishop

Now can you see the monument?

Each is turned half-way round so that
its corners point toward the sides
of the one below and the angles alternate.

Then on the topmost cube is set
a sort of fleur-de-lys of weathered wood,
long petals of board, pierced with odd holes,
four-sided, stiff, ecclesiastical.

Then on the topmost cube is set
a sort of fleur-de-lys of weathered wood,
long petals of board, pierced with odd holes,
four-sided, stiff, ecclesiastical.

From it four thin, warped poles spring out,
(slanted like fishing-poles or flag-poles)
and from them jig-saw work hangs down

four lines of vaguely whittled ornament
over the edges of the boxes
to the ground.

The view is geared
(that is, the view's perspective)
so low there is no "far away,"
and we are far away within the view.

A sea of narrow, horizontal boards
lies out behind our lonely monument,
its long grains alternating right and left
like floor-boards--spotted, swarming-still,
and motionless.

A sky runs parallel,
and it is palings, coarser than the sea's:
splintery sunlight and long-fibred clouds.

An ancient promontory,
an ancient principality whose artist-prince
might have wanted to build a monument

to mark a tomb or boundary, or make
a melancholy or romantic scene of it...

It's like a stage-set; it is all so flat!
Those clouds are full of glistening splinters!
What is that?

"It's piled-up boxes,
outlined with shoddy fret-work, half-fallen off,
cracked and unpainted. It looks old."

--The strong sunlight, the wind from the sea,
all the conditions of its existence,
may have flaked off the paint, if ever it was painted,
and made it homelier than it was.

I am tired of breathing this eroded air,
this dryness in which the monument is cracking.

The crudest scroll-work says "commemorate,"
while once each day the light goes around it
like a prowling animal,
or the rain falls on it, or the wind blows into it.

The crudest scroll-work says "commemorate,"
while once each day the light goes around it
like a prowling animal,
or the rain falls on it, or the wind blows into it.

The crudest scroll-work says "commemorate,"
while once each day the light goes around it
like a prowling animal,
or the rain falls on it, or the wind blows into it.