The Trouble with Poetry: And Other Poems

by Billy Collins

  The Introduction

  I don’t think this next poem

  needs any introduction—

  it’s best to let the work speak for itself.

  Maybe I should just mention

  that whenever I use the word five,

  I’m referring to that group of Russian composers

  who came to be known as “The Five,”

  Balakirev, Moussorgsky, Borodin—that crowd.

  Oh—and Hypsicles was a Greek astronomer.

  He did something with the circle.

  That’s about it, but for the record,

  “Grimké” is Angelina Emily Grimké, the abolitionist.

  “Imroz” is that little island near the Dardanelles.

  “Monad”—well, you all know what a monad is.

  There could be a little problem

  with mastaba, which is one of those Egyptian

  above-ground sepulchers, sort of brick and limestone.

  And you’re all familiar with helminthology?

  It’s the science of worms.

  Oh, and you will recall that Phoebe Mozee

  is the real name of Annie Oakley.

  Other than that, everything should be obvious.

  Wagga Wagga is in New South Wales.

  Rhyolite is that soft volcanic rock.

  What else?

  Yes, meranti is a type of timber, in tropical Asia I think,

  and Rahway is just Rahway, New Jersey.

  The rest of the poem should be clear.

  I’ll just read it and let it speak for itself.

  It’s about the time I went picking wild strawberries.

  It’s called “Picking Wild Strawberries.”

  FOUR

  The Revenant

  I am the dog you put to sleep,

  as you like to call the needle of oblivion,

  come back to tell you this simple thing:

  I never liked you—not one bit.

  When I licked your face,

  I thought of biting off your nose.

  When I watched you toweling yourself dry,

  I wanted to leap and unman you with a snap.

  I resented the way you moved,

  your lack of animal grace,

  the way you would sit in a chair to eat,

  a napkin on your lap, knife in your hand.

  I would have run away,

  but I was too weak, a trick you taught me

  while I was learning to sit and heel,

  and—greatest of insults—shake hands without a hand.

  I admit the sight of the leash

  would excite me

  but only because it meant I was about

  to smell things you had never touched.

  You do not want to believe this,

  but I have no reason to lie.

  I hated the car, the rubber toys,

  disliked your friends and, worse, your relatives.

  The jingling of my tags drove me mad.

  You always scratched me in the wrong place.

  All I ever wanted from you

  was food and fresh water in my metal bowls.

  While you slept, I watched you breathe

  as the moon rose in the sky.

  It took all of my strength

  not to raise my head and howl.

  Now I am free of the collar,

  the yellow raincoat, monogrammed sweater,

  the absurdity of your lawn,

  and that is all you need to know about this place

  except what you already supposed

  and are glad it did not happen sooner—

  that everyone here can read and write,

  the dogs in poetry, the cats and all the others in prose.

  See No Evil

  No one expected all three of them

  to sit there on their tree stumps forever,

  their senses covered with their sinuous paws

  so as to shut out the vile, nefarious world.

  As it happened,

  it was the one on the left

  who was the first to desert his post,

  uncupping his ears,

  then loping off into the orbit of rumors and lies,

  but also into the realm of symphonies,

  the sound of water tumbling over rocks

  and wind stirring the leafy domes of trees.

  Then the monkey on the right lowered his hands

  from his wide mouth and slipped away

  in search of someone to talk to,

  some news he could spread,

  maybe something to curse or shout about.

  And that left the monkey in the middle

  alone with his silent vigil,

  shielding his eyes from depravity’s spectacle,

  blind to the man whipping his horse,

  the woman shaking her baby in the air,

  but also unable to see

  the russet sun on a rough shelf of rock

  and apples in the grass at the base of a tree.

  Sometimes, he wonders about the other two,

  listens for the faint sounds of their breathing

  up there on the mantel

  alongside the clock and the candlesticks.

  And some nights in the quiet house

  he wishes he could break the silence with a question,

  but he knows the one on his right

  would not be able to hear,

  and the one to his left,

  according to their sacred oath—

  the one they all took with one paw raised—

  is forbidden forever to speak, even in reply.

  Freud

  I think I know what he would say

  about the dream I had last night

  in which my nose was lopped off in a sword fight,

  leaving me to wander the streets of 18th-century Paris

  with a kind of hideous blowhole in the middle of my face.

  But what would be his thoughts

  about the small brown leather cone

  attached to my face with goose grease

  which I purchased from a gnome-like sales clerk

  at a little shop called House of a Thousand Noses?

  And how would he interpret

  my stopping before every gilded mirror

  to admire the fine grain and the tiny brass studs,

  always turning to show my best profile,

  my clean-shaven chin slightly raised?

  Surely, narcissism fails to capture

  my love of posing in those many rooms,

  sometimes with an open window behind me

  showing the blue sky which would be eclipsed

  by the Eiffel Tower in roughly a hundred years.

  Height

  Viewed from the roof of a tall building,

  people on the street

  are said to take on the appearance of ants,

  but I have been up here for so long,

  gazing down over this parapet,

  that the ants below have begun to resemble people.

  Look at that one lingering

  near a breadcrumb on the curb,

  does he not share the appearance of my brother-in-law?

  And the beautiful young ant

  in the light summer dress

  with the smooth, ovoid head,

  the one heading up the lamppost—

  could she not double for my favorite cousin

  with her glad eyes and her pulled-back hair?

  Surely, one with the face

  of my mother and another with the posture

  of my father will soon go hobbling by.

  The Lodger

  After I had beaten my sword into a ploughshare,

  I beat my ploughshare into a hoe,

  then beat the hoe into a fork,

  which I used to eat my dinner alone.

  And when I had finished dinner,

  I beat my fork into a toothpick,

  which I twirled on my lips

  then fl
icked over a low stone wall

  as I walked along the city river

  under the clouds and stars,

  quite happy but for the thought

  that I should have beaten that toothpick into a shilling

  so I could buy a newspaper to read

  after climbing the stairs to my room.

  Class Picture, 1954

  I am the third one

  from the left in the third row.

  The girl I have been in love with

  since the 5th grade is just behind me

  to the right, the one with the bangs.

  The boy who pushes me down

  in the playground

  is the last one on the left in the top row.

  And my friend Paul is the second one

  in the second row, the one

  with his collar sticking out, next to the teacher.

  But that’s not all—

  if you look carefully you can see

  our house in the background

  with its porch and its brick chimney

  and up in the clouds

  you can see the faces of my parents,

  and over there, off to the side,

  Superman is balancing

  a green car over his head with one hand.

  Care and Feeding

  Because tomorrow

  I will turn 420 in dog years,

  I have decided to take myself

  for a long walk on the path around the lake,

  and when I get back to the house,

  I will jump up on my chest

  and lick my nose, my ears and eyelids

  while I tell myself again and again to get down.

  Then I will replenish my bowl

  with cold water from the tap

  and hand myself a biscuit from the jar

  which I will hold gingerly in my teeth.

  Then I will make three circles

  and lie down on the wood floor at my feet

  and close my eyes

  as I type all morning and into the afternoon,

  checking every once in a while

  to make sure I am still there,

  reaching down with one hand

  to stroke my furry, esteemed, venerable head.

  Carry

  I want to carry you

  and for you to carry me

  the way voices are said to carry over water.

  Just this morning on the shore,

  I could hear two people talking quietly

  in a rowboat on the far side of the lake.

  They were talking about fishing,

  then one changed the subject,

  and, I swear, they began talking about you.

  Drawing Class

  If you ever asked me

  how my drawing classes are going,

  I would tell you that I enjoy

  adhering to the outline of a thing,

  to follow the slope of an individual pear

  or the curve of a glossy piano.

  And I love trailing my hand

  over the smooth membrane of bond,

  the intelligent little trinity

  of my fingers gripping the neck of the pencil

  while the other two dangle below

  like the fleshy legs of a tiny swimmer.

  I would add that I can get lost

  crosshatching the shadow of a chair

  or tracing and retracing

  the slight undercarriage of a breast.

  Even the preparations call out to me—

  taping the paper to a wooden board,

  brushing its surface clean,

  and sharpening a few pencils to a fine point.

  The thin hexagonal pencil

  is mightier than the pen,

  for it can modulate from firm to faint

  and shift from thin to broad

  whenever it leans more acutely over the page—

  the bright yellow pencil,

  which is also mightier than the sword

  for there is no erasing what the sword can do.

  We all started with the box and the ball

  then moved on to the cup and the lamp,

  the serrated leaf, the acorn with its cap.

  But I want to graduate to the glass decanter

  and learn how to immobilize in lead

  translucent curtains lifted in the air.

  I want to draw

  four straight lines that will connect me

  to the four points of the compass,

  to the bright spires of cities,

  the overlapping trellises,

  the turning spokes of the world.

  One day I want to draw freehand

  a continuous figure

  that will begin with me

  when the black tip touches the paper

  and end with you when it is lifted

  and set down beside a luminous morning window.

  The Flying Notebook

  With its spiraling metal body

  and white pages for wings,

  my notebook flies over my bed while I sleep—

  a bird full of quotations and tiny images

  who loves the night’s dark rooms,

  glad now to be free of my scrutiny and my pen point.

  Tomorrow, it will go with me

  into the streets where I may stop to look

  at my reflection in a store window,

  and later I may break a piece of bread

  at a corner table in a restaurant

  then scribble something down.

  But tonight it flies around me in circles

  sailing through a column of moonlight,

  then beating its paper wings even more,

  once swooping so low

  as to ripple the surface of a lake

  in a dream in which I happen to be drowning.

  Fool Me Good

  I am under the covers

  waiting for the heat to come up

  with a gurgle and hiss

  and the banging of the water hammer

  that will frighten the cold out of the room.

  And I am listening to a blues singer

  named Precious Bryant

  singing a song called “Fool Me Good.”

  If you don’t love me, baby, she sings,

  would you please try to fool me good?

  I am also stroking the dog’s head

  and writing down these words,

  which means that I am calmly flying

  in the face of the Buddhist advice

  to do only one thing at a time.

  Just pour the tea,

  just look into the eye of the flower,

  just sing the song—

  one thing at a time

  and you will achieve serenity,

  which is what I would love to do

  as the fan-blades of the morning begin to turn.

  If you don’t love me, baby,

  she sings

  as a day-moon fades in the window

  and the hands circle the clock,

  would you please try to fool me good?

  Yes, Precious, I reply,

  I will fool you as good as I can,

  but first I have to learn to listen to you

  with my whole heart,

  and not until you have finished

  will I put on my slippers,

  squeeze out some toothpaste,

  and make a big foamy face in the mirror,

  freshly dedicated to doing one thing at a time—

  one note at a time for you, darling,

  one tooth at a time for me.

  Evening Alone

  Last of the strong sun

  on white tiles, stack of white towels,

  faint piano melody from downstairs,

  and the downpour of hot water on my shoulders.

  I lift my face to the nozzle, close my eyes

  and see mountains folded

  over mountains,

  smoke rising from a woodcutter
’s hut,

  and in the distance, billowing pastel clouds.

  It must be China I am beholding

  on this early summer evening—

  the great sway of rivers,

  thousands of birds rising on the wing,

  the jade and mulberries of China,

  plum blossoms—now the cry of a pheasant.

  It is a vision that drains me of desire,

  and leaves me wanting nothing

  but to be here

  in this hot steamy room