PRAISE FOR Nine Horses AND BILLY COLLINS
“A typical Collins poem has a self-illuminating quality to it, or … a gratifyingly organic feel about it, a sense that like some splendidly blooming plant, it develops naturally from even a most inauspicious instant of germination.… Nine Horses should only add to his rightful acclaim.”
—The Boston Globe
“Such a sensible and gifted man is America’s poet laureate—young writers have plenty to learn from his clarity and apparent ease.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Collins reveals the unexpected within the ordinary. He peels back the surface of the humdrum to make the moment new.”
—The Christian Science Monitor
“So obviously a virtuoso, Collins is sure to bring many new readers to poetry.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“At once accessible and profound, [Collins’s] work makes him a natural people’s poet.”
—Boston Herald
“Using simple, understandable language, Collins captures ordinary life—its pleasures, its discontents, its moments of sadness and of joy.”
—USA Today
“[Nine Horses] should be placed next to Gideon’s Bible in every motel room in America. It should be required reading in order to get a driver’s license. It’s that essential, that accessible, that much fun.”
—The Providence Journal
“[Collins] writes out … one of the major poetic scripts of our time: the one that finds transcendence in the ordinary, and sings hymns to the banal. The most obvious thing to say about Collins’s poetry is that it is funny, in an accessible and immediately familiar way. But his true poetic gift is something more than a sense of humor; it is a genuine, often debased, wit.… At its most powerful, this kind of wit is truly creative: if, as Emerson said, every word began life as a metaphor, wit resurrects the metaphor hiding in ordinary words.”
—The New Republic
“[Collins’s] poetry insistently appeals to the mainstream. It brims with shared confidences, speaking softly and inviting the reader to come a little closer to the page. He does not write above or below his audience, but right at them. He engages us in intimate conversation.”
—The Dallas Morning News
BILLY COLLINS is the author of six
collections of poetry, including Sailing
Alone Around the Room; Questions About
Angels; The Art of Drowning; and Picnic,
Lightning, and is the editor of Poetry
180: A Turning Back to Poetry. He is a
Distinguished Professor of English at
Lehman College of the City University
of New York. He was appointed
Poet Laureate of the United States
for 2001–2003.
ALSO BY BILLY COLLINS
Poetry 180 (editor)
Sailing Alone Around the Room
Picnic, Lightning
The Best Cigarette (CD)
The Art of Drowning
Questions About Angels
The Apple That Astonished Paris
Video Poems
Pokerface
2003 Random House Trade Paperback Edition
Copyright © 2002 by Billy Collins
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Random House Trade Paperbacks and colophon are
registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This work was originally published in hardcover by
Random House, Inc., in 2002.
Some of the poems which appear in this volume
first appeared in the following periodicals:
The American Scholar: “The Return of the Key”; Barrow Street: “Rooms”;
Boulevard: “Paris”; Brilliant Corners: “Air Piano” (as “And His Sextet”);
Crazyhorse: “As If to Demonstrate an Eclipse,” “Trompe L’Oeil”; Cream City
Review: “Istanbul,” “The Listener,” “The Literary Life”; Crowd: “Languor,”
“Roadside Flowers”; Dominion Review: “To My Patron”; Double Take: “The
Country,” “Obituaries”; Field: “The Great Walter Pater,” “Velocity”; Five Points:
“Absence,” “Balsa,” “Bodhidharma,” “Lying in Bed in the Dark, I Silently
Address the Birds of Arizona”; The Gettysburg Review: “By a Swimming Pool
Outside Siracusa,” “Creatures”; Green Mountains Review: “Albany”; Kenyon
Review: “The Stare”; New Delta Review: “Surprise”; The New Yorker: “Earth”;
Oxford American: “Death in New Orleans, A Romance,” “Nine Horses,”
“Tipping Point”; Ploughshares: “The Only Day in Existence”; Poems and Plays:
“Bermuda”; Poetry: “Aimless Love,” “Christmas Sparrow,” “Elk River Falls,”
“Litany,” “ ‘More Than a Woman,’ ” “The Parade,” “Study in Orange and White,”
“Today,” “Writing in the Afterlife”; Poetry New York: “Ave Atque Vale”; Third
Coast: “Love”; Tight: “Colorado”; Tin House: “Rain”
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Collins, Billy.
Nine horses: poems / Billy Collins.—1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-58836-278-0
I. Title.
PS3553.O47478 N45 2002
811′.54—dc21 2002024868
Random House website address: www.atrandom.com
v3.1
FOR MARY AND DANIELLE,
DEARLY DEPARTED
CONTENTS
Cover
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Note to the Reader
Epigraph
NIGHT LETTER TO THE READER
I. THE COUNTRY
VELOCITY
“MORE THAN A WOMAN”
AIMLESS LOVE
ABSENCE
ROYAL ARISTOCRAT
PARIS
ISTANBUL
LOVE
LANGUOR
OBITUARIES
II. TODAY
AVE ATQUE VALE
ROADSIDE FLOWERS
AS IF TO DEMONSTRATE AN ECLIPSE
TROMPE L’OEIL
CREATURES
TIPPING POINT
BIRTHDAY
ALBANY
STUDY IN ORANGE AND WHITE
ROOMS
NINE HORSES
III. LITANY
THE RETURN OF THE KEY
THE LISTENER
THE LITERARY LIFE
THE GREAT WALTER PATER
BY A SWIMMING POOL OUTSIDE SIRACUSA
BERMUDA
IGNORANCE
DEATH IN NEW ORLEANS, A ROMANCE
AIR PIANO
DRAWING
TO MY PATRON
WRITING IN THE AFTERLIFE
IV. THE PARADE
THE ONLY DAY IN EXISTENCE
NO TIME
BALSA
ELK RIVER FALLS
EARTH
COLORADO
LYING IN BED IN THE DARK, I SILENTLY ADDRESS THE BIRDS OF ARIZONA
BODHIDHARMA
RAIN
CHRISTMAS SPARROW
THE STARE
SURPRISE
POETRY
A Note to the Reader About this Poetry eBook
The way a poem looks on the page is a vital aspect of its being. The length of its lin
es and the poet’s use of stanza breaks give the poem a physical shape, which guides our reading of the poem and distinguishes it from prose.
With an eBook, this distinct shape may be altered if you choose to take advantage of one of the functions of your eReader by changing the size of the type for greater legibility. Doing this may cause the poem to have line breaks not intended by the poet. To preserve the physical integrity of the poem, we have formatted the eBook so that any words that get bumped down to a new line in the poem will be noticeably indented. This way, you can still appreciate the poem’s original shape regardless of your choice of type size.
See, then, that bronze equestrian statue. The cruel rider has kept the bit in his horse’s mouth for two centuries. Unbridle him for a minute, if you please, and wash his mouth with water.
—Thomas De Quincey
Night Letter to the Reader
I get up from the tangled bed and go outside,
a bird leaving its nest,
a snail taking a holiday from its shell,
but only to stand on the lawn,
an ordinary insomniac
amid the growth systems of garden and woods.
If I were younger, I might be thinking
about something I heard at a party,
about an unusual car,
or the press of Saturday night,
but as it is, I am simply conscious,
an animal in pajamas,
sensing only the pale humidity
of the night and the slight zephyrs
that stir the tops of the trees.
The dog has followed me out
her nose lifted as if she were inhaling
the tall white flowers,
visible tonight in the darkened garden,
and there was something else I wanted to tell you,
something about the warm orange light
in the windows of the house,
but now I am wondering if you are even listening
and why I bother to tell you these things
that will never make a difference,
flecks of ash, tiny chips of ice.
But this is all I want to do—
tell you that up in the woods
a few night birds were calling,
the grass was cold and wet on my bare feet,
and that at one point, the moon,
looking like the top of Shakespeare’s
famous forehead,
appeared, quite unexpectedly,
illuminating a band of moving clouds.
The Country
I wondered about you
when you told me never to leave
a box of wooden, strike-anywhere matches
lying around the house because the mice
might get into them and start a fire.
But your face was absolutely straight
when you twisted the lid down on the round tin
where the matches, you said, are always stowed.
Who could sleep that night?
Who could whisk away the thought
of the one unlikely mouse
padding along a cold water pipe
behind the floral wallpaper
gripping a single wooden match
between the needles of his teeth?
Who could not see him rounding a corner,
the blue tip scratching against a rough-hewn beam,
the sudden flare, and the creature
for one bright, shining moment
suddenly thrust ahead of his time—
now a fire-starter, now a torchbearer
in a forgotten ritual, little brown druid
illuminating some ancient night.
Who could fail to notice,
lit up in the blazing insulation,
the tiny looks of wonderment on the faces
of his fellow mice, onetime inhabitants
of what once was your house in the country?
Velocity
In the club car that morning I had my notebook
open on my lap and my pen uncapped,
looking every inch the writer
right down to the little writer’s frown on my face,
but there was nothing to write about
except life and death
and the low warning sound of the train whistle.
I did not want to write about the scenery
that was flashing past, cows spread over a pasture,
hay rolled up meticulously—
things you see once and will never see again.
But I kept my pen moving by drawing
over and over again
the face of a motorcyclist in profile—
for no reason I can think of—
a biker with sunglasses and a weak chin,
leaning forward, helmetless,
his long thin hair trailing behind him in the wind.
I also drew many lines to indicate speed,
to show the air becoming visible
as it broke over the biker’s face
the way it was breaking over the face
of the locomotive that was pulling me
toward Omaha and whatever lay beyond Omaha
for me and all the other stops to make
before the time would arrive to stop for good.
We must always look at things
from the point of view of eternity,
the college theologians used to insist,
from which, I imagine, we would all
as we rush along the road of the world,
as we rush down the long tunnel of time—
the biker, of course, drunk on the wind,
but also the man reading by a fire,
speed lines coming off his shoulders and his book,
and the woman standing on a beach
studying the curve of horizon,
even the child asleep on a summer night,
speed lines flying from the posters of her bed,
from the white tips of the pillowcases,
and from the edges of her perfectly motionless body.
“More Than a Woman”
Ever since I woke up today,
a song has been playing uncontrollably
in my head—a tape looping
over the spools of the brain,
a rosary in the hands of a frenetic nun,
mad fan belt of a tune.
It must have escaped from the radio
last night on the drive home
and tunneled while I slept
from my ears to the center of my cortex.
It is a song so cloying and vapid
I won’t even bother mentioning the title,
but on it plays as if I were a turntable
covered with dancing children
and their spooky pantomimes,
as if everything I had ever learned
was being slowly replaced
by its slinky chords and the puffballs of its lyrics.
It played while I watered the plant
and continued when I brought in the mail
and fanned out the letters on a table.
It repeated itself when I took a walk
and watched from a bridge
brown leaves floating in the channels of a current.
In the late afternoon it seemed to fade,
but I heard it again at the restaurant
when I peered in at the lobsters
lying on the bottom of an illuminated
tank which was filled to the brim
with their copious tears.
And now at this dark window
in the middle of the night
I am beginning to think
I could be listening to music of the spheres,
the sound no one ever hears
because it has been playing forever,
only the spheres are colored pool balls,
and the music is oozing from a jukebox
whose lights I can just make out through the clouds.
Aimless Love
This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.
In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.
This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.
The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.
No lust, no slam of the door—
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.
No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor—
just a twinge every now and then
for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.