The Pink Dog from Ipanema

So, February was the centennial of one of my favorite poets, Elizabeth Bishop. To celebrate, some of her unpublished works are seeing the light along with a travelogue she wrote on Brazil without the edits that she disliked in the original published work.

Speaking of Brazil, what I liked best though was a story on Here and Now about one of the poems she wrote during her time there, "Pink Dog." It was, sadly, the last poem she completed before her death in 1979, although she had started writing it in 1963. Apparently, you can recite it to the tune of "The Girl from Ipanema" for most of the lines. I can't seem to pull it off but the reader on the show did (quelle dommage, his rendition is not in the link.) Here is the poem, see if you can do it:

Pink Dog

[ Rio de Janeiro ]

The sun is blazing and the sky is blue.
Umbrellas clothe the beach in every hue.
Naked, you trot across the avenue.

Oh, never have I seen a dog so bare!
Naked and pink, without a single hair . . .
Startled, the passersby draw back and stare.

Of course they’re mortally afraid of rabies.
You are not mad; you have a case of scabies
but look intelligent. Where are your babies?

(A nursing mother, by those hanging teats.)
In what slum have you hidden them, poor bitch,
while you go begging, living by your wits?

Didn’t you know? It’s been in all the papers,
to solve this problem, how they deal with beggars?
They take and throw them in the tidal rivers.

Yes, idiots, paralytics, parasites
go bobbing in the ebbing sewage, nights
out in the suburbs, where there are no lights.

If they do this to anyone who begs,
drugged, drunk, or sober, with or without legs,
what would they do to sick, four- legged dogs?

In the cafés and on the sidewalk corners
the joke is going round that all the beggars
who can afford them now wear life preservers.

In your condition you would not be able
even to float, much less to dog- paddle.
Now look, the practical, the sensible

solution is to wear a fantasía.*
Tonight you simply can’t afford to be a-
n eyesore. But no one will ever see a

dog in máscara this time of year.
Ash Wednesday’ll come but Carnival is here.
What sambas can you dance? What will you wear?

They say that Carnival’s degenerating
—radios, Americans, or something,
have ruined it completely. They’re just talking.

Carnival is always wonderful!
A depilated dog would not look well.
Dress up! Dress up and dance at Carnival!