Nine Horses

by Billy Collins

  But my heart is always propped up

  in a field on its tripod,

  ready for the next arrow.

  After I carried the mouse by the tail

  to a pile of leaves in the woods,

  I found myself standing at the bathroom sink

  gazing down affectionately at the soap,

  so patient and soluble,

  so at home in its pale green soap dish.

  I could feel myself falling again

  as I felt its turning in my wet hands

  and caught the scent of lavender and stone.

  Absence

  This morning as low clouds

  skidded over the spires of the city

  I found next to a bench

  in a park an ivory chess piece—

  the white knight as it turned out—

  and in the pigeon-ruffling wind

  I wondered where all the others were,

  lined up somewhere

  on their red and black squares,

  many of them feeling uneasy

  about the saltshaker

  that was taking his place,

  and all of them secretly longing

  for the moment

  when the white horse

  would reappear out of nowhere

  and advance toward the board

  with his distinctive motion,

  stepping forward, then sideways

  before advancing again—

  the same move I was making him do

  over and over in the sunny field of my palm.

  Royal Aristocrat

  My old typewriter used to make so much noise

  I had to put a cushion of newspaper

  beneath it late at night

  so as not to wake the whole house.

  Even if I closed the study door

  and typed a few words at a time—

  the best way to work anyway—

  the clatter of keys was still so loud

  that the gray and yellow bird

  would wince in its cage.

  Some nights I could even see the moon

  frowning down through the winter trees.

  That was twenty years ago,

  yet as I write this with my soft lead pencil

  I can still hear that distinctive sound,

  like small arms fire across a border,

  one burst after another

  as my wife turned in her sleep.

  I was a single monkey

  trying to type the opening lines of my Hamlet,

  often doing nothing more

  than ironing pieces of paper in the platen

  then wrinkling them into balls

  to flick into the wicker basket.

  Still, at least I was making noise,

  adding to the great secretarial din,

  that chorus of clacking and bells,

  thousands of desks receding into the past.

  And that was more than can be said

  for the mute rooms of furniture,

  the speechless salt and pepper shakers,

  and the tall silent hedges surrounding the house.

  Such deep silence on those nights—

  just the sound of my typing

  and a few stars singing a song their mother

  sang when they were mere babies in the sky.

  Paris

  In the apartment someone gave me,

  the bathroom looked out on a little garden

  at the bottom of an air shaft

  with a few barely sprouting trees,

  ivy clinging to the white cinder blocks,

  a blue metal table and a rusted chair

  where, it would seem, no one had ever sat.

  Every morning, a noisy bird

  would flutter down between the buildings,

  perch on a thin branch and yell at me

  in French bird-talk

  while I soaked in the tub

  under the light from the pale translucent ceiling.

  And while he carried on, I would lie there

  in the warm soapy water

  wondering what shirt I would put on that day,

  what zinc-covered bar I would stand at

  with my Herald Tribune and a cup of strong coffee.

  After a lot of squawking, he would fly

  back into the sky leaving only the sound

  of a metal storefront being raised

  or a scooter zipping by outside,

  which was my signal

  to stand up in the cloudy water

  and reach for a towel,

  time to start concentrating on which way

  I would turn after I had locked the front door,

  what shop signs I would see,

  what bridges I would lean on

  to watch the broad river undulating

  like a long-playing record under the needle of my eye.

  Time to stand dripping wet and wonder

  about the hordes of people

  I would pass in the street, mostly people

  whose existence I did not believe in,

  but a few whom I would glance at

  and see my whole life

  the way you see the ocean from the shore.

  One morning after another,

  I would fan myself dry with a towel

  and wonder about what paintings

  I would stand before that day,

  looking forward to the usual—

  the sumptuous reclining nudes,

  the knife next to a wedge of cheese,

  a landscape with pale blue mountains,

  the heads and shoulders of gods

  struggling with one another,

  a foot crushing a snake—

  but always hopeful for something new

  like yesterday’s white turkeys in a field

  or the single stalk of asparagus on a plate

  in a small gilded frame,

  always ready, now that I am dressed,

  to cheer the boats of the beautiful,

  the boats of the strange,

  as they float down the river of this momentous day.

  Istanbul

  It was a pleasure to enter by a side street

  in the center of the city

  a bathhouse said to be 300 years old,

  old enough to have opened the pores of Florence Nightingale

  and soaped the musical head of Franz Liszt.

  And it was a pleasure to drink

  cold wine by a low wood fire

  before being directed to a small room in an upper gallery,

  a room with a carpet and a narrow bed

  where I folded my clothes into a pile

  then came back down, naked

  except for a gauzy striped cloth tucked around my waist.

  It was an odd and eye-opening sensation

  to be led by a man with close-cropped hair

  and spaces between his teeth

  into a steamy marble rotunda

  and to lie there alone on the smooth marble

  watching the droplets fall through the beams

  of natural light in the high dome

  and later to hear the song I sang—

  “She Thinks I Still Care”—echo up into the ceiling.

  I felt like the last of the sultans

  when the man returned and began to scrub me—

  to lather and douse me, scour and shampoo me,

  and splash my drenched body

  with fresh warm water scooped from a marble basin.

  But it was not until he sudsed me

  behind my ears and between my toes

  that I felt myself filling with gratitude

  the way a cloud fills with rain,

  the way a glass pipe slowly fills with smoke.

  In silence I thanked the man

  who scrubbed the bottoms of my feet.

  I thanked the history of the Turkish bath

  and the long chain of bathmen standing unshaven,

 
arms folded, waiting for the next customer

  to come through the swinging doors of frosted glass.

  I thanked everyone whose job

  it ever was to lay hands on the skin of strangers,

  and I gave general thanks that I was lying

  facedown in a warm puddle of soap

  and not a warm puddle of blood

  in some corner of this incomprehensible city.

  As one bucket after another

  of warm water was poured over my lowered head,

  I stopped thinking of who and what to thank

  and rode out on a boat of joy,

  a blue boat of marble and soap,

  rode out to the entrance of the harbor

  where I raised a finger of good-bye

  then felt the boat begin to rise and fall

  as it met the roll of the incoming waves,

  bearing my body, my clean, blessed body out to sea.

  Love

  The boy at the far end of the train car

  kept looking behind him

  as if he were afraid or expecting someone

  and then she appeared in the glass door

  of the forward car and he rose

  and opened the door and let her in

  and she entered the car carrying

  a large black case

  in the unmistakable shape of a cello.

  She looked like an angel with a high forehead

  and somber eyes and her hair

  was tied up behind her neck with a black bow.

  And because of all that,

  he seemed a little awkward

  in his happiness to see her,

  whereas she was simply there,

  perfectly existing as a creature

  with a soft face who played the cello.

  And the reason I am writing this

  on the back of a manila envelope

  now that they have left the train together

  is to tell you that when she turned

  to lift the large, delicate cello

  onto the overhead rack,

  I saw him looking up at her

  and what she was doing

  the way the eyes of saints are painted

  when they are looking up at God

  when he is doing something remarkable,

  something that identifies him as God.

  Languor

  I have come back to the couch—

  hands behind my head,

  legs crossed at the ankles—

  to resume my lifelong study

  of the ceiling and its river-like crack,

  its memory of a water stain,

  the touch of civilization

  in the rounded steps of the molding,

  and the lick of time in the flaking plaster.

  To move would only ruffle

  the calm surface of the morning,

  and disturb shadows of leaves in the windows.

  And to throw open a door

  would startle the fish in the pond,

  maybe frighten a few birds from a hedge.

  Better to stay here,

  to occupy the still room of thought,

  to listen to the dog breathing on the floor,

  better to count my lucky coins,

  or redesign my family coat of arms—

  remove the plow and hive, shoo away the bee.

  Obituaries

  These are no pages for the young,

  who are better off in one another’s arms,

  nor for those who just need to know

  about the price of gold,

  or a hurricane that is ripping up the Keys.

  But eventually you may join

  the crowd who turn here first to see

  who has fallen in the night,

  who has left a shape of air walking in their place.

  Here is where the final cards are shown,

  the age, the cause, the plaque of deeds,

  and sometimes an odd scrap of news—

  that she collected sugar bowls,

  that he played solitaire without any clothes.

  And all the survivors huddle at the end

  under the roof of a paragraph

  as if they had sidestepped the flame of death.

  What better way to place a thin black frame

  around the things of the morning—

  the hand-painted cup,

  the hemispheres of a cut orange,

  the slant of sunlight on the table?

  And sometimes a most peculiar pair turns up,

  strange roommates lying there

  side by side upon the page—

  Arthur Godfrey next to Man Ray,

  Ken Kesey by the side of Dale Evans.

  It is enough to bring to mind an ark of death,

  not the couples of the animal kingdom,

  but rather pairs of men and women

  ascending the gangplank two by two,

  surgeon and model,

  balloonist and metalworker,

  an archaeologist and an authority on pain.

  Arm in arm, they get on board

  then join the others leaning on the rails,

  all saved at last from the awful flood of life—

  so many of them every day

  there would have to be many arks,

  an armada to ferry the dead

  over the heavy waters that roll beyond the world,

  and many Noahs too,

  bearded and fiercely browed, vigilant up there at every prow.

  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.

  Ave Atque Vale

  Even though I managed to swerve around the lump

  of groundhog lying on its back on the road,

  he traveled with me for miles,

  a quiet passenger

  who passed the time looking out the window

  enjoying this new view of the woods

  he once hobbled around in,

  sleeping all day and foraging at night,

  rising sometimes to consult the wind with his snout.

  Last night he must have wandered

  onto the road, hoping to slip

  behind the curtain of soft ferns on the other side.

  I see these forms every day

  and always hope the next one up ahead

  is a shredded tire, a discarded brown coat,

  but there they are, assuming

  every imaginable pose for death’s portrait.

  This one I speak of, for example,

  the one who rode with me for miles,

  reminded me of a small Roman citizen,

  with his prosperous belly,

  his faint smile,

  and his one stiff forearm raised

  as if he were still alive, still hailing Caesar.

  Roadside Flowers

  These are the kind you are supposed

  to stop to look at, as I do this morning,

  but just long enough

  so as not to carry my non-stopping

  around with me all day,

  a big medicine ball of neglect and disregard.

  But now I seem to be carrying

  my not-stopping-
long-enough ball

  as I walk around

  the circumference of myself

  and up and down the angles of the day.

  Roadside flowers,

  when I get back to my room

  I will make it all up to you.

  I will lie on my stomach and write

  in a notebook how lighthearted you were,

  pink and white among the weeds,

  wild phlox perhaps,

  or at least a cousin of that family,

  a pretty one who comes to visit

  every summer for two weeks without her parents,

  she who unpacks her things upstairs

  while I am out on the lawn

  throwing the ball as high as I can,

  catching it almost

  every time in my two outstretched hands.