Love Lies Sleeping

by Elizabeth Bishop

Earliest morning, switching all the tracks

that cross the sky from cinder star to star,

coupling the ends of streets

to trains of light.
.
now draw us into daylight in our beds;

and clear away what presses on the brain:

put out the neon shapes

that float and swell and glare
.
down the gray avenue between the eyes

in pinks and yellows, letters and twitching signs.

Hang-over moons, wane, wane!

From the window I see
.
an immense city, carefully revealed,

made delicate by over-workmanship,

detail upon detail,

cornice upon facade,
.
reaching up so languidly up into

a weak white sky, it seems to waver there.

(Where it has slowly grown

in skies of water-glass
.
from fused beads of iron and copper crystals,

the little chemical “garden” in a jar

trembles and stands again,

pale blue, blue-green, and brick.)
.
The sparrows hurriedly begin their play.

Then, in the West, “Boom!” and a cloud of smoke.

“Boom!” and the exploding ball

of blossom blooms again.
.
(And all the employees who work in a plants

where such a sound says “Danger,” or once said “Death,”

turn in their sleep and feel

the short hairs bristling
.
on backs of necks.) The cloud of smoke moves off.

A shirt is taken of a threadlike clothes-line.

Along the street below

the water-wagon comes
.
throwing its hissing, snowy fan across

peelings and newspapers. The water dries

light-dry, dark-wet, the pattern

of the cool watermelon.
.
I hear the day-springs of the morning strike

from stony walls and halls and iron beds,

scattered or grouped cascades,

alarms for the expected:
.
queer cupids of all persons getting up,

whose evening meal they will prepare all day,

you will dine well

on his heart, on his, and his,
.
so send them about your business affectionately,

dragging in the streets their unique loves.

Scourge them with roses only,

be light as helium,
.
for always to one, or several, morning comes

whose head has fallen over the edge of his bed,

whose face is turned

so that the image of
.
the city grows down into his open eyes

inverted and distorted. No. I mean

distorted and revealed,

if he sees it at all.
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Similar to “The Man-Moth,” “Love Lies Sleeping” presents a surreal view of New York through the eyes of a speaker waking to a summer morning. The first eleven stanzas of the poem depict the city in great detail; underneath this observation of the material world, however, there also lies a spirituality or otherworldliness. Bishop wrote in her notebook: “But [the spiritual] proceeds from the material, the material eaten out with acid, pulled down from underneath, made to perform and always kept in order, in its place. Sometimes it cannot be made to indicate its spiritual goal clearly…but even then the spiritual must be felt”(quoted in Kalstone 15), and in this poem as well as “The Man-Moth,” we see another side of New York, at times beautiful, at times surreal, and at times terrifying. As the speaker emerges from sleep, she describes the New York night blending into day. Dreamlike trains in the night sky fade out along with the neon signs and the “hangover moons.” In the morning light, the speaker is intent on describing in detail the emerging city. The “immense city, carefully revealed” becomes personified as it seems to yawn and stretch itself toward the skies. The city becomes even more surreal as Bishop describes, in a parenthetical aside, the city wavering:
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Read the complete analysis: New York Poems: “Love Lies Sleeping”
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A final reminder that we will be reading and discussing Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry on September 28. See the SCHEDULE PAGE for the list of featured poems.
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Please note that for the September 28th session only, we will be meeting in the mezzanine meeting room.