For Louise Crane <br /> <br /> <br />In your next letter I wish you'd say <br />where you are going and what you are doing; <br />how are the plays and after the plays <br />what other pleasures you're pursuing: <br /> <br />taking cabs in the middle of the night, <br />driving as if to save your soul <br />where the road gose round and round the park <br />and the meter glares like a moral owl, <br /> <br />and the trees look so queer and green <br />standing alone in big black caves <br />and suddenly you're in a different place <br />where everything seems to happen in waves, <br /> <br />and most of the jokes you just can't catch, <br />like dirty words rubbed off a slate, <br />and the songs are loud but somehow dim <br />and it gets so teribly late, <br /> <br />and coming out of the brownstone house <br />to the gray sidewalk, the watered street, <br />one side of the buildings rises with the sun <br />like a glistening field of wheat. <br /> <br />--Wheat, not oats, dear. I'm afraid <br />if it's wheat it's none of your sowing, <br />nevertheless I'd like to know <br />what you are doing and where you are going.<br /><br />Elizabeth Bishop<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/letter-to-n-y/
