Did he, did she, so love
them that only between

pages of a poetry book
would these children

be kept safe, like some
flower, some leaf pressed

dry into preservation?
Or was it simply a case

of something within easy
reach, a scrap to keep a

place, for the moment,
temporarily, toward a

tomorrow that seems
never to have arrived?

Fortuity, then, to have
looked for a clue to Miss

Bishop’s predilections.
I kept the photo, proof

against disaster, proof
that nothing is ever lost

lest it fall into hands that
will will them to lose.

Highland, IN
Aug. 22, 1998

© George Monteiro

George Monteiro is Professor Emeritus of English and Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, Brown University, and he continues as Adjunct Professor of Portuguese Studies at the same university. He served as Fulbright lecturer in American Literature in Brazil–Sao Paulo and Bahia–Ecuador and Argentina; and as Visiting Professor in UFMG in Belo Horizonte. In 2007 he served as Helio and Amelia Pedroso / Luso-American Foundation Professor of Portuguese, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Among his recent books are Stephen Crane’s Blue Badge of Courage, Fernando Pessoa and Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Literature, The Presence of Pessoa, The Presence of Camões, and Conversations with Elizabeth Bishop and Critical Essays on Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. Among his translations are Iberian Poems by Miguel Torga, A Man Smiles at Death with Half a Face by José Rodrigues Miguéis, Self-Analysis and Thirty Other Poems by Fernando Pessoa, and In Crete, with the Minotaur, and Other Poems by Jorge de Sena. He has also published two collections of poems, The Coffee Exchange and Double Weaver’s Knot. 

Image: Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal illustrated by Rodin

 http://www.baumanrarebooks.com/rare-books/rodin-auguste-baudelaire-charles/fleurs-du-mal/80382.aspx