Nine Horses Read online

  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

  and stands a little ahead,

  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

  appear to have speed lines trailing behind us

  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,
<
br />   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.