Improv, Week 2

One Art
-Elizabeth Bishop

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 loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely one. 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 (Write it!) like disaster.



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There is no tongue for my bitch to master;
no mate. For a bastard can be a bastard
without a spoken word. Yet, no one accepts

my mouth in heat for anything other than a dog.
To bitch is to speak, born with intent to unsettle,
born to lose and never own a word or a letter.

To bitch a man out for losing the keys, to chew
up his ears for late hour entrances, to swear
and spit complaints only builds him as master--

because to bitch to be the dog, to understand
your own four legs, tail, the command to lay.
There is no tongue for my bitch to master.

For the bastard born owns a language despite his body,
with a tongue of contest without the gamble of his sex.
The bastard is born to a mother and has no master.

The tongue does not always reside in the mouth;
but rolls up between the thighs in wait to bark or talk.
There is no tongue for my bitch to master;
there is only the dog of her sex caged in her mouth.