listen:there's a hell

of a good universe next door;let's go

e e cummings

Though that sounds like a lot to get done on a Tuesday.

Every morning since you fell down on the face of the earth,
I read about you in the newspaper
along with the box scores, the weather, and all the bad news.

Sometimes I am reminded that today
will not be a wildly romantic time for you,
nor will you be challenged by educational goals
nor will you need to be circumspect at the workplace.

Another day, I learn that you will miss
an opportunity to travel and make new friends
though you never cared much about either.

I can’t imagine you ever facing a new problem
with a positive attitude, but you will definitely not
be doing that or anything like that on this weekday in March.
And the same goes for the fun
you might have gotten from group activities,
a likelihood attributed to everyone under your sign.

A dramatic rise in income may be a reason
to treat yourself, but that would apply
more to all the Pisces who are still alive today,
still swimming up and down the stream of life
or suspended in a pool in the shade of an overhanging tree.

But it will come as a relief to learn
that you don’t need to reflect carefully before acting
nor do you have to think more of others,
and never again will creative work take a back seat
to the business responsibilities that you never really had.

And don’t worry today or any other day
about unwanted problems caused by your failure
to interact rationally with your many associates.
No more goals for you, no more pressing matters,
no more money or children, jobs or important tasks,
but then again, you were never thus encumbered.

So leave it to me now
to plan carefully for success and the wealth it brings,
to counsel the dear ones close to my heart
and to welcome any intellectual stimulation that comes my way
though that sounds like a lot to get done on a Tuesday.

I am better off closing the newspaper,
putting on the clothes I wore yesterday
(when I read that your financial prospects were looking up)
then pushing off on my copper-colored bicycle
and pedaling along the road by the shore of the bay.

And you go on being perfect just where you are,
lying there in your beautiful blue suit,
your hands crossed upon your chest
like the wings of a bird who has flown
in its strange migration straight up from earth
and pierced the enormous circle of the zodiac.

BILLY COLLINS. HOROSCOPES FOR THE DEAD.

I don't want to schedule / Love, I want to pour it out

--even in this cold season love can endure
And be green again, which I do want to believe
Despite my unconstant heart--

But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.

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 that 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'm 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.




BILLY COLLINS. LITANY.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night.

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.


BILLY COLLINS.

Practice resurrection.

Oh, I like Choco Rios at the Weary Traveler on a snowy Monday night. It was hot Mexican cocoa + alcoholic banana something + cinnamon, cinnamon, cinnamon. So good. Bernd tasted like grog the rest of the night. Just kissing him with grog on his breath burned MY throat—that’s how strong that drink was! Mine just deepened my feeling of settled, sweetly sleepy contentment.

My stuff moves home today and I move home tomorrow. I walk around campus and feel strange and severed. I was such a good student, and now I need to learn how to be a good somebody else. I don’t know where I go directly from here, but I keep thinking of a Wendell Berry poem:

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist could send one into the past more suddenly...

My three favorite poems are "The Lanyard" by Billy Collins, "Love Poem" by John Frederick Nims, and "September 1, 1939" by W. H. Auden. There are a handful of other poems and poets I appreciate (let's see... Yeats, um, Yeats... Atwood! Margaret Atwood writes some poetry... Yeats, Atwood... and David Slavitt wrote this one poem about the sinking of the Titanic that I wrote an essay about once...), but these three take the cake.

"The Lanyard" - you must read it, really. Or you must log on to the NPR website and hear Billy Collins read it, in his dry monotone.

Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Classic.

/ / / / /


Next, Nims' "Love Poem," which addresses its subject as "my clumbsiest dear."
My clumbsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases,
At whose quick touch all glasses chip and ring,
Whose palms are bulls in china, burrs in linen,
And have no cunning with any soft thing

Except all ill at ease fidgeting people:
The refugee uncertain at the door
You make at home; deftly you steady
The drunk clambering on his undulant floor.

Unpredictable dear, the taxi drivers' terror,
Shrinking from far headlights pale as a dime
Yet leaping before red apoplectic streetcars-
Misfit in any space. And never on time.

A wrench in clocks and the solar system. Only
With words and people and love you move at ease.
In traffic of wit expertly manoeuver
And keep us, all devotion, at your knees.

Forgeting your coffee spreading on our flannel,
Your lipstick grinning on our coat,
So gayly in love's unbreakable heaven
Our soals on glory of split bourbon float.

Be with me darling early and late. Smash glasses-
I will study wry music for your sake.
For should yor hands drop white and empty
All the toys of the world would break. I love this poem for its unorthodox warmth and honesty. No shooting stars, no pounding hearts, no sweating palms. Only with words and people and love you move at ease. The last lines (For should your hands drop white and empty / All the toys of the world would break) crushes me a little.

/ / / / /

And, lastly, Auden's "September 1, 1939." I love every line from I sit in one of the dives / On Fifty-Second Street / Uncertain and afraid / As the clever hopes expire straight through to the closing words, but especially the closing words, which I will post here and not spoil by saying anything more about them:

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

We do not know what is going to happen to it, or to us.

Life, like holiness, can be known only by being experienced. To experience it is not to 'figure it out' or even to understand it, but to suffer it and rejoice in it as it is. In suffering it and rejoicing in it as it is, we know that we do not and cannot understand it completely. We know, moreover, that we do not wish to have it appropriated by somebody's claim to have understood it. Though we have life, it is beyond us. We do not know how we have it, or why. We do not know what is going to happen to it, or to us. It is not predictable; though we can destroy it, we cannot make it. It cannot, except by reduction and the grave risk of damage, be controlled. It is holy. To think otherwise is to enslave life, and to make, no humanity, but a few humans its predictably inept masters.

WENDELL BERRY.