238 PA RT T W O
and then a baby rabbit jumped out,
short-eared, to our surprise.
So soft!—a handful of intangible ash
with fixed, ignited eyes.Surprise deflects from the armadillo to a rabbit, who turns into flat a-sounds as
those last two lines purely horrify.
Was this what she stayed for in Brazil? Bishop can also be charmed. “San-
tarém,” named for a town where the Amazon and Tapajós rivers meet, recalls
a “watery, dazzling dialectic” one “golden evening.”
The street was deep in dark-gold river sand
damp from the ritual afternoon rain,
and teams of zebus plodded, gentle, proud,
andblue, with down-curved horns and hanging ears,
pulling carts with solid wheels.
The zebus’ hooves, the people ’s feet
waded in golden sand,
dampered by golden sand,
so that almost the only sounds
were creaks and shush, shush, shush.Finding river sand in the streets, and balancing “zebus’ hooves” with “people ’s
feet,” she paints this golden medley with no irony. Intriguingly,
A river schooner with raked masts
and violet-colored sails tacked in so close
her bowsprit seemed to touch the church.“Of course I may be remembering it all wrong,” Bishop had begun “Santarém.”
That hardly weakens her surprise at seeing a magic schooner or oxlike zebus
wading alongside people through deep gold sand. As in “The Moose” toward
evening, truly “The light grows richer.”