Poems
1. The Parade
How exhilarating it was to march
along the great boulevards
in the sunflash of trumpets
and under all the waving flags --
the flag of ambition, the flag of love.
So many of us streaming along --
all of humanity, really --
moving in perfect step,
yet each lost in the room of a private dream.
How stimulating the scenery of the world,
the rows of roadside trees,
the huge curtain of the sky.
How endless it seemed until we veered
off the broad turnpike
into a pasture of high grass,
headed toward the dizzying cliffs of mortality.
Generation after generation,
we keep shouldering forward
until we step off the lip into space.
And I should not have to remind you
that little time is given here
to rest on a wayside bench,
to stop and bend to the wildflowers,
or to study a bird on a branch --
not when the young
are always shoving from behind,
not when the old keep tugging us forward,
pulling on our arms with all their feeble strength.
Source Citation: Collins, Billy. "The Parade." Poetry. 178.5 (Aug. 2001): p249. Literature Resource Center. Gale. Century College Library. 8 Dec. 2009 <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=LitRC&u=mnacenturycl>.
2. Today
If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze
that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house
and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,
a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies
seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking
a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,
releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage
so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting
into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.
Source Citation: Collins, Billy. "Today." Poetry. 176.1 (Apr. 2000): p1. Literature Resource Center. Gale. Century College Library. 8 Dec.2009 <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=LitRC&u=mnacenturycl>.
3. Litany
You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine ...
Jacques Crickillon
You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.
However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way you are the pine-scented air.
It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.
And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.
It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.
I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley,
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.
I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I am not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and – somehow – the wine.
Source Citation: Collins, Billy. "Litany." Poetry. 179.5 (Feb. 2002): p249. Literature Resource Center. Gale. Century College Library. 8 Dec. 2009 <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=LitRC&u=mnacenturycl>.
4. No Time
In a rush this weekday morning,
I tap the horn as I speed past the cemetery
where my parents are buried
side by side beneath a slab of smooth granite.
Then, all day, I think of him rising up
to give me that look
of knowing disapproval
while my mother calmly tells him to lie back down.
Source Citation: Collins, Billy. "No Time." Poetry. 177.2 (Dec. 2000): p182. Literature Resource Center. Gale. Century College Library. 8 Dec. 2009 <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=LitRC&u=mnacenturycl>.
5. Study in Orange and White.
I knew that James Whistler was part of the Paris scene,
but I was still surprised when I found the painting
of his mother at the Musee d'Orsay
among all the colored dots and mobile brushstrokes
of the French Impressionists.
And I was surprised to notice
after a few minutes of benign staring,
how that woman, stark in profile
and fixed forever in her chair,
began to resemble my own ancient mother
who was now fixed forever in the stars, the air, the earth.
You can understand why he titled the painting
"Arrangement in Gray and Black"
instead of what everyone naturally calls it,
but afterward, as I walked along the river bank,
I imagined how it might have broken
the woman's heart to be demoted from mother
to a mere composition, a study in colorlessness.
As the summer couples leaned into each other
along the quay and the wide, low-slung boats
full of spectators slid up and down the Seine
between the carved stone bridges
and their watery reflections,
I thought: how ridiculous, how off-base.
It would be like Botticelli calling "The Birth of Venus"
"Composition in Blue, Ochre, Green, and Pink,"
or the other way around
like Rothko titling one of his sandwiches of color
"Fishing Boats Leaving Falmouth Harbor at Dawn."
Or, as I scanned the menu at the cafe
where I now had come to rest,
it would be like painting something laughable,
like a chef turning on a spit
over a blazing fire in front of an audience of ducks
and calling it "Study in Orange and White."
But by that time, a waiter had appeared
with my glass of Pernod and a clear pitcher of water,
and I sat there thinking of nothing
but the women and men passing by--
mothers and sons walking their small fragile dogs--
and about myself,
a kind of composition in blue and khaki,
and, now that I had poured
some water into the glass, milky-green.
Full Text:
Source Citation: Collins, Billy. "Study in Orange and White." Poetry. 173.3 (Jan. 1998): p207. Literature Resource Center. Gale. Century College Library. 8 Dec. 2009 <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=LitRC&u=mnacenturycl>.
6 Writing in the Afterlife.
I imagined the atmosphere would be clear,
shot with pristine light,
not this sulphurous haze,
the air ionized as before a thunderstorm.
Many have pictured a river here,
but no one mentioned all the boats,
their benches crowded with naked passengers,
each bent over a writing tablet.
I knew I would not always be a child
with a model train and a model tunnel,
and I knew I would not live forever,
jumping all day through the hoop of myself.
I had heard about the journey to the other side
and the clink of the final coin
in the leather purse of the man holding the oar,
but how could anyone have guessed
that as soon as we arrived
we would be asked to describe this place
and to include as much detail as possible—
not just the water, he insists,
rather the oily, fathomless, rat-happy water,
not simply the shackles, but the rusty,
iron, ankle-shredding shackles—
and that our next assignment would be
to jot down, off the tops of our heads,
our thoughts and feelings about being dead,
not really an assignment,
the man rotating the oar keeps telling us—
think of it more as an exercise, he groans,
think of writing as a process,
a never-ending, infernal process,
and now the boats have become jammed together,
bow against stern, stern locked to bow,
and not a thing is moving, only our diligent pens.
Full Text:
Source Citation: Collins, Billy. "Writing in the Afterlife." Poetry. 181.1 (October-November 2002): p17. Literature Resource Center. Gale. Century College Library. 8 Dec. 2009 <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=LitRC&u=mnacenturycl>.
7 . Madmen.
They say you can jinx a poem
if you talk about it before it is done.
If you let it out too early, they warn,
your poem will fly away,
and this time they are absolutely right.
Take the night I mentioned to you
I wanted to write about the madmen,
as the newspapers so blithely call them,
who attack art, not in reviews,
but with breadknives and hammers
in the quiet museums of Prague and Amsterdam.
Actually, they are the real artists,
you said, spinning the ice in your glass.
The screwdriver is their brush.
The real vandals are the restorers,
you went on, slowly turning me upside-down,
the ones in the white doctor's smocks
who close the wound in the landscape,
and thus ruin the true art of the mad.
I watched my poem fly down to the front
of the bar and hover there
until the next customer walked in--
then I watched it fly out the open door into the night
and sail away, I could only imagine,
over the dark tenements of the city.
All I had wished to say
was that art was also short,
as a razor can teach with a slash or two,
that it only seems long compared to life,
but that night, I drove home alone
with nothing swinging in the cage of my heart
except the faint hope that I might
catch a glimpse of the thing
in the fan of my headlights,
maybe perched on a road sign or a street lamp,
poor unwritten bird, its wings folded,
staring down at me with tiny illuminated eyes.
Full Text:
Source Citation: Collins, Billy. "Madmen." Poetry. 172.5 (Aug. 1998): p268. Literature Resource Center. Gale. Century College Library. 8 Dec. 2009 <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=LitRC&u=mnacenturycl>.
8 Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I Pause...
It seems these poets have nothing
up their ample sleeves
they turn over so many cards so early,
telling us before the first line
whether it is wet or dry,
night or day, the season the man is standing in,
even how much he has had to drink.
Maybe it is autumn and he is looking at a sparrow.
Maybe it is snowing on a town with a beautiful name.
"Viewing Peonies at the Temple of Good Fortune
on a Cloudy Afternoon" is one of Sun Tung Po's.
"Dipping Water from the River and Simmering Tea"
is another one, or just
"On a Boat, Awake at Night."
And Lu Yu takes the simple rice cake with
"In a Boat on a Summer Evening
I Heard the Cry of a Waterbird.
It Was Very Sad and Seemed To Be Saying
My Woman Is Cruel--Moved, I Wrote This Poem."
There is no iron turnstile to push against here
as with headings like "Vortex on a String,"
"The Horn of Neurosis," or whatever.
No confusingly inscribed welcome mat to puzzle over.
Instead, "I Walk Out on a Summer Morning
to the Sound of Birds and a Waterfall"
is a beaded curtain brushing over my shoulders.
And "Ten Days of Spring Rain Have Kept Me Indoors"
is a servant who shows me into the room
where a poet with a thin beard
is sitting on a mat with a jug of wine
whispering something about clouds and cold wind,
about sickness and the loss of friends.
How easy he has made it for me to enter here,
to sit down in a corner,
cross my legs like his, and listen.
Full Text:
Source Citation: Collins, Billy. "Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I Pause..." Poetry. 174.3 (June 1999): p131. Literature Resource Center. Gale. Century College Library. 8 Dec. 2009 <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=LitRC&u=mnacenturycl>.
9 Poem
It's like writing a short letter
to everyone in the world at once,
only I don't have anyone's address
and there is no thin blue envelope to carry it,
no tiny picture of a famous aviator
or of a blooming flower to speed it on its way.
Source Citation: Collins, Billy. "Poem." Poetry. 181.1 (October-November 2002): p17. Literature Resource Center. Gale. Century College Library. 8 Dec. 2009 <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=LitRC&u=mnacenturycl>.
10 THREESOME
Two drakes and one duck standing still
on a frozen pond,
they in their iridescent suits
and she in plain brown,
a young Amish girl
who has fallen in with a couple of dandies,
strollers on the boulevard of ice,
bad company even on this sunny morning
in early March,
even if all you are doing is
just standing there with them
in the cold on your thin orange legs.
Source Citation: COLLINS, BILLY. "THREESOME." Poetry. 177.5 (Mar. 2001): p369. Literature Resource Center. Gale. Century College Library. 8 Dec. 2009 <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=LitRC&u=mnacenturycl>.
11Flip-Book
Once I made the cowboy jump up and down with my thumb.
Now I am flipping through the little book of my life
noting how brief the blur of action is before the pages close again.
Source Citation: Collins, Billy. "Flip-Book." The Southern Review. 45.2 (Spring 2009): p203. Literature Resource Center. Gale. Century College Library. 8 Dec. 2009 <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=LitRC&u=mnacenturycl>.
12 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.
Source Citation: Collins, Billy. "Liu Yung." Poetry. 187.4 (Jan. 2006): p286. Literature Resource Center. Gale. Century College Library. 8 Dec. 2009 <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=LitRC&u=mnacenturycl>.