Benton 27. In the spring of 1942, Bishop spent two weeks in Mérida, the capital city of Yucatán, during an extended five and a half month trip through Mexico with Marjorie Carr Stevens, Bishop’s companion for five years from 1941 until 1946. On this trip, Bishop met Pablo Neruda, who was on a diplomatic mission to Mexico and one day happened to be climbing the same pyramid at Chichén Itzá as Bishop. Reviewing Bishop’s Complete Poems: 1927-1979 (1983), on the dust jacket for which this painting is reproduced, James Merrill wrote: “The watercolor on the jacket, a view of a Mexican town done by the poet in 1942, serves nicely as an introduction. It’s a cheerful scene, in no way traditionally “picturesque.” Beyond a balustrade flanked on one side by an absurd ornamental urn (so much for Art?) and on the other by flourishing palm fronds, we see some little, run-down, brilliantly colored houses. Above these, near and far, quite upstaging the few church spires lost among them, perhaps fifty windmills crowd the horizon – so that, like the mysterious flooded dreamscape in “Sunday, 4 A.M.,” it appears to be “cross- and wheel-studded / like a tick-tack-toe.” The picture illustrates at once Bishop’s delight in foreign parts, her gratitude for the givens of a scene, and her typical way with systems. These tend to fade beside her faith in natural powers – here, those jaunty cockades turning in wind to draw water, compared to which the Christian temples, though neatly delineated, look a touch feeble and evanescent.” – James Merrill, “The Transparent Eye” in Collected Prose (N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), p. 235.