The Trouble With Poetry and Other Poems

by Billy Collins

Eastern Standard Time Poetry speaks to all people, it is said, but here I would like to address only those in my own time zone, this proper slice of longitude that runs from pole to snowy pole down the globe through Montreal to Bogotá. Oh, fellow inhabitants of this singular band, sitting up in your many beds this morning— the sun falling through the windows and casting a shadow on the sundial— consider those in other zones who cannot hear these words. They are not slipping into a bathrobe as we are, or following the smell of coffee in a timely fashion. Rather, they are at work already, leaning on copy machines, hammering nails into a house-frame. They are not swallowing a vitamin like us; rather they are smoking a cigarette under a half moon, even jumping around on a dance floor, or just now sliding under the covers, pulling down the little chains on their bed lamps. But we are not like these others, for at this very moment on the face of the earth, we are standing under a hot shower, or we are eating our breakfast, considered by people of all zones to be the most important meal of the day. Later, when the time is right, we might sit down with the boss, wash the car, or linger at a candle-lit table, but now is the hour for pouring the juice and flipping the eggs with one eye on the toaster. So let us slice a banana and uncap the jam, lift our brimming spoons of milk, and leave it to the others to lower a flag or spin absurdly in a barber’s chair— those antipodal oddballs,...

Breathless Some like the mountains, some like the seashore, Jean-Paul Belmondo says to the camera in the opening scene. Some like to sleep face up, some like to sleep on their stomachs, I am thinking here in bed— some take the shape of murder victims flat on their backs all night, others float face down on the dark waters. Then there are those like me who prefer to sleep on their sides, knees brought up to the chest, head resting on a crooked arm and a soft fist touching the chin, which is the way I would like to be buried, curled up in a coffin in a fresh pair of cotton pajamas, a down pillow under my weighty head. After a lifetime of watchfulness and nervous vigilance, I will be more than ready for sleep, so never mind the dark suit, the ridiculous tie and the pale limp hands crossed on the chest. Lower me down in my slumber, tucked into myself like the oldest fetus on earth, and while cows look over the stone wall of the cemetery, let me rest here in my earthy little bedroom, my lashes glazed with ice, the roots of trees inching nearer, and no dreams to frighten me anymore.

Building with Its Face Blown Off How suddenly the private is revealed in a bombed-out city, how the blue and white striped wallpaper of a second story bedroom is now exposed to the lightly falling snow as if the room had answered the explosion wearing only its striped pajamas. Some neighbors and soldiers poke around in the rubble below and stare up at the hanging staircase, the portrait of a grandfather, a door dangling from a single hinge. And the bathroom looks almost embarrassed by its uncovered ochre walls, the twisted mess of its plumbing, the sink sinking to its knees, the ripped shower curtain, the torn goldfish trailing bubbles. It’s like a dollhouse view as if a child on its knees could reach in and pick up the bureau, straighten a picture. Or it might be a room on a stage in a play with no characters, no dialogue or audience, no beginning, middle and end— just the broken furniture in the street, a shoe among the cinder blocks, a light snow still falling on a distant steeple, and people crossing a bridge that still stands. And beyond that—crows in a tree, the statue of a leader on a horse, and clouds that look like smoke, and even farther on, in another country on a blanket under a shade tree, a man pouring wine into two glasses and a woman sliding out the wooden pegs of a wicker hamper filled with bread, cheese, and several kinds of olives.

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.

The Trouble with Poetry The trouble with poetry, I realized as I walked along a beach one night— cold Florida sand under my bare feet, a show of stars in the sky— the trouble with poetry is that it encourages the writing of more poetry, more guppies crowding the fish tank, more baby rabbits hopping out of their mothers into the dewy grass. And how will it ever end? unless the day finally arrives when we have compared everything in the world to everything else in the world, and there is nothing left to do but quietly close our notebooks and sit with our hands folded on our desks. Poetry fills me with joy and I rise like a feather in the wind. Poetry fills me with sorrow and I sink like a chain flung from a bridge. But mostly poetry fills me with the urge to write poetry, to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame to appear at the tip of my pencil. And along with that, the longing to steal, to break into the poems of others with a flashlight and a ski mask. And what an unmerry band of thieves we are, cut-purses, common shoplifters, I thought to myself as a cold wave swirled around my feet and the lighthouse moved its megaphone over the sea, which is an image I stole directly from Lawrence Ferlinghetti— to be perfectly honest for a moment— the bicycling poet of San Francisco whose little amusement park of a book I carried in a side pocket of my uniform up and down the treacherous halls of high school.

BY BILLY COLLINS Whale Day The Rain in Portugal Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems Horoscopes for the Dead Ballistics The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems Nine Horses Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems Picnic, Lightning The Art of Drowning Questions About Angels The Apple That Astonished Paris