New England Diary

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'Controlled panic'

Sandpiper

“The roaring alongside he takes for granted,

And that every so often the world is bound to shake.

He runs, he run to the south, finical, awkward,

In a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake….”


— From “The Sandpiper,’’ by Elizabeth Bishop (1911-79). A Worcester native, she travel widely, and lived abroad for stretches but always returned to New England.