I seemed to represent a more primitive stage,
maybe not the round-shouldered ape
dragging his knuckles on the ground,
but neither the fully upright hominoid
ready to put on a suit and head for the office.
Was it something in the slope of my brow
or my slack belly?
Was this the beginning of the Great Regression
as the anthropologists of tomorrow would call it?
I was never the smartest monkey on the block,
I thought to myself in the shower,
but I was at least advanced enough to be standing
under a cascade of steaming water,
and I did have enough curiosity to wonder
what the next outline in the sequence might look like:
the man of the future stepping forward
like the others rising to their hind legs behind him,
only with a longer stride, a more ample cranium,
and maybe a set of talons,
or a pair of useless, cherubic wings.
The Fish
As soon as the elderly waiter
placed before me the fish I had ordered,
it began to stare up at me
with its one flat, iridescent eye.
I feel sorry for you, it seemed to say,
eating alone in this awful restaurant
bathed in such unkindly light
and surrounded by these dreadful murals of Sicily.
And I feel sorry for you, too—
yanked from the sea and now lying dead
next to some boiled potatoes in Pittsburgh—
I said back to the fish as I raised my fork.
And thus my dinner in an unfamiliar city
with its rivers and lighted bridges
was graced not only with chilled wine
and lemon slices but with compassion and sorrow
even after the waiter had removed my plate
with the head of the fish still staring
and the barrel vault of its delicate bones
terribly exposed, save for a shroud of parsley.
A Dog on His Master
As young as I look,
I am growing older faster than he,
seven to one
is the ratio they tend to say.
Whatever the number,
I will pass him one day
and take the lead
the way I do on our walks in the woods.
And if this ever manages
to cross his mind,
it would be the sweetest
shadow I have ever cast on snow or grass.
The Great American Poem
If this were a novel,
it would begin with a character,
a man alone on a southbound train
or a young girl on a swing by a farmhouse.
And as the pages turned, you would be told
that it was morning or the dead of night,
and I, the narrator, would describe
for you the miscellaneous clouds over the farmhouse
and what the man was wearing on the train
right down to his red tartan scarf,
and the hat he tossed onto the rack above his head,
as well as the cows sliding past his window.
Eventually—one can only read so fast—
you would learn either that the train was bearing
the man back to the place of his birth
or that he was headed into the vast unknown,
and you might just tolerate all of this
as you waited patiently for shots to ring out
in a ravine where the man was hiding
or for a tall, raven-haired woman to appear in a doorway.
But this is a poem, not a novel,
and the only characters here are you and I,
alone in an imaginary room
which will disappear after a few more lines,
leaving us no time to point guns at one another
or toss all our clothes into a roaring fireplace.
I ask you: who needs the man on the train
and who cares what his black valise contains?
We have something better than all this turbulence
lurching toward some ruinous conclusion.
I mean the sound that we will hear
as soon as I stop writing and put down this pen.
I once heard someone compare it
to the sound of crickets in a field of wheat
or, more faintly, just the wind
over that field stirring things that we will never see.
What Love Does
A fine thing, or so it sounds
on the radio in the summer
with all the windows rolled down.
Yet it pierces not only the heart
but the eyeball and the scrotum
and the little target of the nipple with arrows.
It turns everything into a symbol
like a storm that breaks loose
in the final chapter of a long novel.
And it may add sparkle to a morning,
or deepen a night
when the bed is ringed with fire.
It teaches you new joys
and new maneuvers—
the takedown, the reversal, the escape.
But mostly it comes and goes,
a bee visiting the center
of one flower, then another.
Even as the ink is drying
on her name, it is off
to visit someone in another city,
a city with two steeples,
rows of brick chimney pots,
and a school with a tree-lined entrance.
It will travel through the night to get there,
and it will arrive like an archangel
through an iron gate no one ever seemed to notice before.
Divorce
Once, two spoons in bed,
now tined forks
across a granite table
and the knives they have hired.
Liu Yung
This poet of the Sung dynasty is so miserable.
The wind sighs around the trees,
a single swan passes overhead,
and he is alone on the water in his skiff.
If only he appreciated life
in eleventh-century China as much as I do—
no loud cartoons on television,
no music from the ice cream truck,
just the calls of elated birds
and the steady flow of the water clock.
This Little Piggy Went to Market
is the usual thing to say when you begin
pulling on the toes of a small child,
and I have never had a problem with that.
I could easily picture the piggy with his basket
and his trotters kicking up the dust on an imaginary road.
What always stopped me in my tracks was
the middle toe—this little piggy ate roast beef.
I mean I enjoy a roast beef sandwich
with lettuce and tomato and a dollop of horseradish,
but I cannot see a pig ordering that in a delicatessen.
I am probably being too literal-minded here—
I am even wondering why it’s called “horseradish.”
I should just go along with the beautiful nonsense
of the nursery, float downstream on its waters.
After all, Little Jack Horner speaks to me deeply.
I don’t want to be the one to ruin the children’s party
by asking unnecessary questions about Puss in Boots
or, again, the implications of a pig eating beef.
By the way, I am completely down with going
“Wee wee wee” all the way home,
having done that many times and knowing exactly how it feels.
Old Man Eating Alone in a Chinese Restaurant
I am glad I resisted the temptation,
if it was a temptation when I was young,
to write a poem about an old man
eating alone at a corner table in a Chinese restaurant.
I would have gotten it all wrong
thinking: the poor bastard, not a friend in the world
and with only a book for a companion.
He’ll probably pay the bill out of a change purse.
So glad I waited all these decades
to record how hot and sour the hot and sour soup is
here at Chang’s this afternoon
and how cold the Chinese beer in a frosted glass.
And my book—José Saramago’s Blindness
as it turns out—is so absorbing that I look up
from its escalating horrors only
when I am stunned by one of his arresting sentences.
And I should mention the light
which falls through the big windows this time of day
italicizing everything it touches—
the plates and teapots, the immaculate tablecloths,
as well as the soft brown hair of the waitress
in the white blouse and short black skirt,
the one who is smiling now as she bears a cup of rice
and shredded beef with garlic to my favorite table in the corner.
The Breather
Just as in the horror movies
when someone discovers that the phone calls
are coming from inside the house
so, too, I realized
that our tender overlapping
has been taking place only inside me.
All that sweetness, the love and desire—
it’s just been me dialing myself
then following the ringing to another room
to find no one on the line,
well, sometimes a little breathing
but more often than not, nothing.
To think that all this time—
which would include the boat rides,
the airport embraces, and all the drinks—
it’s been only me and the two telephones,
the one on the wall in the kitchen
and the extension in the darkened guestroom upstairs.
Oh, My God!
Not only in church
and nightly by their bedsides
do young girls pray these days.
Wherever they go,
prayer is woven into their talk
like a bright thread of awe.
Even at the pedestrian mall
outbursts of praise
spring unbidden from their glossy lips.
The Mortal Coil
One minute you are playing the fool,
strumming a tennis racquet as if it were a guitar
for the amusement of a few ladies
and the next minute you are lying on your deathbed,
arms stiff under the covers,
the counterpane tucked tight across your chest.
Or so seemed the progress of life
as I was flipping through the photographs
in Proust: The Later Years by George Painter.
Here he is at a tennis party, larking for the camera,
and 150 pages later, nothing but rictus on a pillow,
and in between, a confection dipped
into a cup of lime tea and brought to the mouth.
Which is why, instead of waiting
for our date this coming weekend,
I am now speeding to your house at 7:45 in the morning
where I hope to catch you half dressed—
and I am wondering which half
as I change lanes without looking—
with the result that we will be lifted
by the urgent pull of the flesh
into a state of ecstatic fusion, and you will be late for work.
And as we lie there
in the early, latticed light,
I will suggest that you take George Painter’s
biography of Proust
to the office so you can show your boss
the pictures that caused you to arrive shortly before lunch
and he will understand perfectly,
for I imagine him to be a man of letters,
maybe even a devoted Proustian,
but at the very least a fellow creature,
ensnared with the rest of us in the same mortal coil,
or so it would appear from the wishful
vantage point of your warm and rumpled bed.
The Future
When I finally arrive there—
and it will take many days and nights—
I would like to believe others will be waiting
and might even want to know how it was.
So I will reminisce about a particular sky
or a woman in a white bathrobe
or the time I visited a narrow strait
where a famous naval battle had taken place.
Then I will spread out on a table
a large map of my world
and explain to the people of the future
in their pale garments what it was like—
how mountains rose between the valleys
and this was called geography,
how boats loaded with cargo plied the rivers
and this was known as commerce,
how the people from this pink area
crossed over into this light-green area
and set fires and killed whoever they found
and this was called history—
and they will listen, mild-eyed and silent,
as more of them arrive to join the circle,
like ripples moving toward,
not away from, a stone tossed into a pond.
Envoy
Go, little book,
out of this house and into the world,
carriage made of paper rolling toward town
bearing a single passenger
beyond the reach of this jittery pen,
far from the desk and the nosy gooseneck lamp.
It is time to decamp,
put on a jacket and venture outside,
time to be regarded by other eyes,
bound to be held in foreign hands.
So off you go, infants of the brain,
with a wave and some bits of fatherly advice:
stay out as late as you like,
don’t bother to call or write,
and talk to as many strangers as you can.
acknowledgments
The author is grateful to the editors of the following journals, where some of these poems first appeared:
Alehouse: “China,” “Divorce”
The Atlantic: “Searching”
Bat City Review: “Carpe Diem”
The Cortland Review: “The Golden Years”
Crazyhorse: “Aubade,” “(detail)”
Five Points: “Ballistics,” “High,” “What Love Does”
The Florida Review: “The First Night”
Fulcrum: “Brightly Colored Boats Upturned on the Banks of the Charles,” “Le Chien”
The Gettysburg Review: “New Year’s Day,” “Vermont, Early November”
London Review of Books: “Looking Forward,” “The Poems of Others”
The Massachusetts Review: “On the Death of a Next-Door Neighbor”
Mid-American Review: “Ornithography”
New Ohio Review: “Bathtub Families”
The New York Review of Books: “Greek and Roman Statuary”
The New York Times Magazine: “The Fish”
The New Yorker: “The Future”
The Paris Review: “Tension”
Pleiades: “Addendum”
Poetry: “The Breather,” “Evasive Maneuvers,” “January in Paris,” “Old Man Eating Alone in a Chinese Restaurant,” “Pornography”
A Public Space: “The Lamps Unlit,” “Scenes of Hell”
The Southampton Review: “The Four-Moon Planet”
Subtropics: “No Things”
TriQuarterly: “Adage”
The Virginia Quarterly Review: “August,” “The Great American Poem”
West 10th: “Oh, My God”
Much gratitude is owed to many people at Random House for bringing this book into being, especially Daniel Menaker, David Ebershoff, and Gina Centrello. Thanks also to Shelby White for her generous hospitality and to my family and friends for egging me on.
BILLY COLLINS is the author of eight collections of poetry, including The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems, Nine Horses, Sailing Alone Around the Room, Questions About Angels, The Apple That Astonished Paris, The Art of Drowning, and Picnic, Lightning. He is also the editor of Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry and 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day. A distinguished professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York, he served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003 and Poet Laureate of New York State from 2004 to 2006.
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