When I was three, I watched the Salem fire.

It burned all night (or then I thought it did)

and I stood in my crib & watched it burn.

The sky was bright red; everything was red

out on the lawn, my mother’s white dress looked

rose-red; my white enameled crib was red

and my hands holding to its rods—

the brass knobs holding specks of fire—



I felt not fear but amazement, maybe

my infancy’s chief emotion.

People were plating hoses on the roofs

of the summer cottages on Marblehead Neck;

the red sky was filled with flying motes,

cinders and coals, and bigger things, burnt black.

The water glowed like fire, too, but flat.

I watched some boats arriving on our beach

full of escaping people (I didn’t know that).

One dory, silhouetted black (and later I

thought of this as having looked like

Washington Crossing the Delaware, all black—

in silhouette).

I was terribly thirsty but mama didn’t hear

me calling her. Out on the lawn

she and some neighbors were giving coffee

or food or something to the people landing in the boats—

once in a while I caught a glimpse of her

and called and called—no one paid any attention—



In the brilliant morning across the bay

the fire still went on, but in the sunlight

we saw no more glare, just the clouds of smoke.

The beach was strewn with cinders, dark with ash—

strange objects seemed to have blown across the water:

lifted by that terrible heat, through the red sky?

Blackened boards, shiny black like black feathers—

pieces of furniture, parts of boats, and clothes—

I picked up a woman’s long black cotton

stocking. Curiosity. My mother said sharply

Put that down! I remember clearly, clearly—



But since that night, that day, that reprimand

I have suffered from abnormal thirst—

I swear it’s true—and by the age

of twenty or twenty-one I had begun

to drink, & drink—I can’t get enough

and, as you must have noticed,

I’m half-drunk now… .



And all I’m telling you may be a lie… .



—Elizabeth Bishop, from our Winter 1992 issue