And Other Poems

Elizabeth Bishop breaks off mid-sentence in her first letter to Robert Lowell, because she has been called away to see a calf being born in the pasture behind the house. "You come, too", that letter never quite says; instead she writes "The calf's mother has started to moo, and the cow in the next pasture is mooing even louder, possibly in sympathy. It seems that if they take the calf away immediately, then they don't have the trouble of weaning it. It will drink out of a dish, says Mr. McLeod; he has promised to call me when they try it the first time." There are some who would say that translators are Mr. McLeods, but perhaps it would be both kinder and more accurate to call them cows in the next pasture.