The Class Poet

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

Elizabeth Bishop


Keeping Battle

The art of keeping is a harder war to win
A war whose sides are me--it never ends
When losing, like divorce, just keeps stopping in

The keeping war yields to unforgiving sin
Consider life and love, even just the friends
Who disappear in sight of kinship going thin

'T would seem that all I keep is held within
But since that's metaphysical, let's not pretend
The one and only not-lost win, is my skin

I had it with me when 18 years ago I did begin
It doesn't seem to change even with the trends.
Keeping isn't hard, to me it's always pinned.

Seems it's all that's with me--this shallow bin
of everything I've created: Messages I send
through the keeping skin which reflects my within

Eventually the time ravages will take even my keeping skin
But for that, it seems I must make amends
For it knows not that it makes a sin
This losing war just always has to win