Skunk Hour Poem by Robert Lowell

Skunk Hour

Rating: 3.2


(for Elizabeth Bishop)

Nautilus Island's hermit
heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage;
her sheep still graze above the sea.
Her son's a bishop. Her farmer is first selectman in our village;
she's in her dotage.

Thirsting for
the hierarchic privacy
of Queen Victoria's century
she buys up all
the eyesores facing her shore,
and lets them fall.

The season's ill-
we've lost our summer millionaire,
who seemed to leap from an L. L. Bean
catalogue. His nine-knot yawl
was auctioned off to lobstermen.
A red fox stain covers Blue Hill.

And now our fairy
decorator brightens his shop for fall;
his fishnet's filled with orange cork,
orange, his cobbler's bench and awl;
there is no money in his work,
he'd rather marry.

One dark night,
my Tudor Ford climbed the hill's skull;
I watched for love-cars. Lights turned down,
they lay together, hull to hull,
where the graveyard shelves on the town....
My mind's not right.

A car radio bleats,
'Love, O careless Love....' I hear
my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,
as if my hand were at its throat...
I myself am hell;
nobody's here-

only skunks, that search
in the moonlight for a bite to eat.
They march on their solves up Main Street:
white stripes, moonstruck eyes' red fire
under the chalk-dry and spar spire
of the Trinitarian Church.

I stand on top
of our back steps and breathe the rich air-
a mother skunk with her column of kittens swills the garbage pail.
She jabs her wedge-head in a cup
of sour cream, drops her ostrich tail,
and will not scare.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Taylor 09 May 2018

The audio for this poem disappointed me so much

2 0 Reply
Judy Meibach 18 February 2016

Another of my very favorite pieces - their bond was an amazing one - before Harry met Sally…

3 1 Reply
R James Sterzinger 17 April 2010

loneliness documented and noted. Lowell was one of the greatest of American poets

6 1 Reply
gone gone 25 October 2006

this is poetry............written by one master to another..Godalmighty..it's wonderful! !

8 2 Reply
READ THIS POEM IN OTHER LANGUAGES
Robert Lowell

Robert Lowell

Boston / United States
Close
Error Success