Nine Horses

by Billy Collins

  so there won’t be such a draft

  on my shoulders—

  I will get back to work

  on my long metrical poem,

  the one I will recite to the cheering throng

  prior to your impending beheading.

  Writing in the Afterlife

  I imagined the atmosphere would be clear,

  shot with pristine light,

  not this sulfurous 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.

  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 desire, the flag of ambition.

  So many of us streaming along—

  all of humanity, really—

  moving in perfect sync,

  yet each lost in the room of a private dream.

  How stimulating the scenery of the world,

  the rows of roadside trees,

  the huge blue sheet of the sky.

  How endless it seemed until we veered

  off the broad turnpike

  into a pasture of high grass,

  heading toward the dizzying cliffs of mortality.

  Generation after generation,

  we shoulder forward

  under the play of clouds

  until we high-step off the sharp lip into space.

  So 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

  keep shoving from behind,

  not when the old are tugging us forward,

  pulling on our arms with all their feeble strength.

  The Only Day in Existence

  The morning sun is so pale

  I could be looking at a ghost

  in the shape of a window,

  a tall, rectangular spirit

  peering down at me now in my bed,

  about to demand that I avenge

  the murder of my father.

  But this light is only the first line

  in the five-act play of this day—

  the only day in existence—

  or the opening chord of its long song,

  or think of what is permeating

  these thin bedroom curtains

  as the beginning of a lecture

  I must listen to until dark,

  a curious student in a V-neck sweater,

  angled into the wooden chair of his life,

  ready with notebook and a chewed-up pencil,

  quiet as a goldfish in winter,

  serious as a compass at sea,

  eager to absorb whatever lesson

  this damp, overcast Tuesday

  has to teach me,

  here in the spacious classroom of the world

  with its long walls of glass,

  its heavy, low-hung ceiling.

  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 under a smooth slab of granite.

  Then, all day long, I think of him rising up

  to give me that look

  of knowing disapproval

  while my mother calmly tells him to lie back down.

  Balsa

  A few days ago

  when leaves were rushing by the windows,

  I took this feeling

  I have toward the world,

  this mix of love and fear,

  and carved a scale model of it

  out of a block of balsa wood,

  something you can find at any reputable hobby shop.

  I used a set of knives

  that would be very alarming horrifying shocking dreadful

  in the hands of the wrong person,

  especially if he had you strapped to a chair,

  but in my hands, under a lamp,

  they allowed me to express exactly

  the way I feel toward people and things.

  I did not smoke a cigarette while I worked

  or sip a glass of ginger ale with ice,

  as another might.

  I just worked,

  shaving away, like Michelangelo,

  all the wood that was not my lust and apprehension.

  When I had finished,

  when I had gone as far as the knives

  would allow me to go,

  I placed my attitude toward the world

  on a lace tablecloth,

  a thing so light, so delicate and airy

  I could think of nothing to do

  but sit down in a chair and feel like

  the happiest shell on the beach,

  the happiest hobbyist in town.

  Tomorrow I will get busy working

  on another scale model,

  this time of my childhood,

  which I will fashion also from balsa,

  being careful to keep the blades

  from flying out of control

  as they slice away at the soft cube of wood,

  being careful not to draw any blood.

  Then on Sunday, I will go to the park,

  carrying the fragile thing under my arm,

  and set it on the smooth surface of the oval pond.

  And while the boys are sailing their boats,

  running along the water’s edge with their long sticks,

  oblivious to the cries of their guardians,

  I will stand off to the side

  and watch my childhood—

  that small vessel of wonder and cruelty—

  being blown away by sudden unexpected gusts.

  Elk River Falls

  is where the Elk River falls

  from a rocky and considerable height,

  turning pale with trepidation at the lip

  (it seemed from where I stood below)

  before it is unbuckled from itself

  and plummets, shredded, through the air

  into the shadows of a frigid pool,

  so calm around the edges, a place

  for water to recover from the shock

  of falling apart and coming back together

  before it picks up its song again,

  goes slid
ing around the massive rocks

  and past some islands overgrown with weeds

  then flattens out and slips around a bend

  and continues on its winding course,

  according to this camper’s guide,

  then joins the Clearwater at its northern fork,

  which must in time find the sea

  where this and every other stream

  mistakes the monster for itself,

  sings its name one final time

  then feels the sudden sting of salt.

  Earth

  The sun is so clear and torch-like

  on this cool October morning,

  all I am aware of is the sensation

  of its steady heat on my upturned face.

  I am not thinking of how late the train is

  that I am here to meet,

  here with nothing to read, not even

  the morning paper or a story by O. Henry.

  The unfiltered burn of the autumn sun

  on my skin is all that I know,

  that and a small bubble of curiosity

  about whether you could re-create this feeling in hell

  if you managed to position yourself

  just the right distance from the roaring

  bank of furnaces where the sounds

  of shoveling and howling are coming from.

  But no, the damned would always be jostling

  and pushing us closer to some fiery maw,

  and in heaven the light would be

  too hallowed, too theatrical to warm our faces.

  And there would be no place for the train station

  or the little café across the street,

  no place in hell for the sunny table,

  the bitter coffee, and the woman walking her dog.

  Only the glare—I am imagining

  with my eyes closed behind my favorite sunglasses—

  the glare, some low chanting,

  and the milling of some vast, incorporeal gang.

  Colorado

  Is there any part of the devil’s body

  that has not been used to name

  some feature of the American topography,

  I wondered when the guide directed

  our attention to the rocky tip of a mesa

  which was known as the Devil’s Elbow.

  He was a college student

  just trying to do his summer job

  and besides, the cumulus clouds

  were massing beautifully

  above the high rock face,

  so I was not about to say anything,

  but from my limited encounters

  with evil, it looked to me more

  like the hammer in the devil’s inner ear.

  Lying in Bed in the Dark,

  I Silently Address the Birds of Arizona

  Oh, birds of Arizona,

  who woke me yesterday with your excited chirping,

  where do you go to die?

  So many of you, and yet never a trace

  of your expirations,

  no lump of feathers happened upon

  here on the pavement

  or another there on a square of lawn.

  Are you down in the scrub turning in circles?

  Do you tilt and fall on your side?

  Do you lie there breathing among the warm rocks,

  lie there breathing,

  lie there

  as the moon rises,

  as the members of your flock fall silent for the night,

  and the earth revolves around the center of your tiny eye?

  Bodhidharma

  This morning the surface of the wooded lake

  is uncommonly smooth—absolute glass—

  which must be the reason I am thinking

  of Bodhidharma, the man who brought Buddhism

  to China by crossing the water standing on a single reed.

  What an absorbing story, especially

  when you compare it to Zeus with his electric quiver

  or Apollo who would just as soon

  turn you into a willow tree as look at you sideways.

  In every depiction, there is no mistaking

  Bodhidharma, always up on his reed,

  gliding toward the shores of China,

  a large, fierce-looking man in a loincloth

  delicately balanced on a little strip of bamboo,

  a mere brushstroke on a painted scroll,

  tiny surfboard bearing the lessons of the Buddha.

  I recognized him one night in a Chinese restaurant

  after the disappointment

  of the fortune cookie, the dry orange, and the tepid tea.

  He was hanging on a wall behind the cash register,

  and when I quizzed the young cashier,

  she looked back at the painting and said

  she didn’t know who it was but it looked like her boss.

  Thinking of her and Bodhidharma

  makes me want to do many things,

  but mostly take off my shoes and socks

  and slide over a surface of water on a fragile reed

  heading toward the shore of a new country.

  No message would be burning in my satchel,

  but I might think of one on the way.

  If not, I would announce to the millions

  that it is foolish to invest too heavily

  in the present moment,

  not when we have the benefit of the past

  with its great pillowed rooms of memory,

  let alone the future,

  that city of pyramids and spires,

  and ten thousand bridges

  suspended by webs of glistening wire.

  Rain

  It was raining all day in Kathmandu,

  first a mist then a downpour,

  but still, the wide street leading to the palace

  was thick with people,

  all waiting for the thumb of a delegate,

  whose forehead had been smudged red

  by the thumb of the king,

  to smudge their foreheads red

  on this, the holiest holy day of the year.

  Only a few would receive the touch,

  a merchant told me in his shop

  as he rolled out rug upon rug—

  hundreds of blinding stitches per square inch—

  and another agreed as he opened

  a folded sheet of paper and poured out

  polished blue stones on a velvet cloth.

  But still they waited, hunkered down

  under flapping plastic and broken black umbrellas,

  hoping to make a connection

  the way one might hope to be connected

  by a long chain of handshakes

  to Babe Ruth or Alexander Pope

  only without the need to stand

  in a puddle all day soaked to the skin.

  On the ride back to the hotel,

  in the backseat of a taxi

  I blackened one of my thumb pads

  with a pen then pressed it to my forehead,

  to show the world my belief

  that even though we will all turn to ashes,

  there may be an afterlife for some of us—

  a realm of ink and wind-blown shelves,

  a dominion of book spines and blown-out candles.

  And that became the central tenet of the religion

  I founded that day in a green

  car driven by a suicidal Nepalese

  in a bizarre hat with orange flowers around his neck.

  The central and only tenet, I resolved,

  as I looked out the rain-streaked windows

  at the thin children,

  the holy men shuffling along in their flip-flops,

  carts piled with wet apples,

  and on one sidewalk, groups of shiny wet ducks

  huddled together in the rain,

  presided over by men wagging long, pliant sticks.

  Christmas Sparrowr />
  The first thing I heard this morning

  was a rapid flapping sound, soft, insistent—

  wings against glass as it turned out

  downstairs when I saw the small bird

  rioting in the frame of a high window,

  trying to hurl itself through

  the enigma of glass into the spacious light.

  Then a noise in the throat of the cat

  who was hunkered on the rug

  told me how the bird had gotten inside,

  carried in the cold night

  through the flap of a basement door,

  and later released from the soft grip of teeth.

  On a chair, I trapped its pulsations

  in a shirt and got it to the door,

  so weightless it seemed

  to have vanished into the nest of cloth.

  But outside, when I uncupped my hands,

  it burst into its element,

  dipping over the dormant garden

  in a spasm of wingbeats

  then disappeared over a row of tall hemlocks.

  For the rest of the day,

  I could feel its wild thrumming

  against my palms as I wondered about

  the hours it must have spent

  pent in the shadows of that room,

  hidden in the spiky branches

  of our decorated tree, breathing there

  among the metallic angels, ceramic apples, stars of yarn,