Aimless Love (15 page)
Authors: Billy Collins
In the morning, I walked out barefoot
Among thousands of flowers
Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,
And each had a name—
Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal
Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.
Names written in the air
And stitched into the cloth of the day.
A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.
Monogram on a torn shirt,
I see you spelled out on storefront windows
And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.
I say the syllables as I turn a corner—
Kelly and Lee,
Medina, Nardella, and O’Connor.
When I peer into the woods,
I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden
As in a puzzle concocted for children.
Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,
Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,
Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.
Names written in the pale sky.
Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.
Names silent in stone
Or cried out behind a door.
Names blown over the earth and out to sea.
In the evening—weakening light, the last swallows.
A boy on a lake lifts his oars.
A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,
And the names are outlined on the rose clouds—
Vanacore and Wallace,
(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)
Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.
Names etched on the head of a pin.
One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.
A blue name needled into the skin.
Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,
The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.
Alphabet of names in green rows in a field.
Names in the small tracks of birds.
Names lifted from a hat
Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.
Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.
So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.
To all the editors who have ushered
my poems into print, especially
David Ebershoff
Daniel Menaker
Ed Ochester
Joseph Parisi
Don Paterson
Miller Williams
The author is grateful to the editors of the following periodicals where some of these poems first appeared:
American Arts Quarterly:
“Carrara”
The Atlantic:
“Orient,” “Osprey”
Barnes and Noble Review:
“Note to Antonín Dvorák”
Boulevard:
“After the Funeral,” “Elusive,” “Here and There”
The Cortland Review:
“Lines Written in a Garden in Herefordshire”
Ecotone:
“Best Fall”
Five Points:
“To My Favorite 17-Year-Old High School Girl”
The Georgia Review:
“Drinking Alone”
The Gettysburg Review:
“The Music of the Spheres,” “Villanelle”
Harper’s:
“The Sandhill Cranes of Nebraska”
New Ohio Review:
“All Eyes,” “The Suggestion Box”
The New York Times:
“The Names”
The New Yorker:
“Catholicism”
Poetry:
“Cheerios,” “Irish Poetry,” “Report from the Subtropics”
A Public Space:
“Lincoln”
Raritan:
“Unholy Sonnet #1,” “Biographical Notes on the Haiku Poets”
Shenandoah:
“Sunday Walk”
Slate: “Foundling”
Smithsonian Magazine:
“The Deep,” “The Unfortunate Traveler”
The Southampton Review:
“Foundling,” “Flying Over West Texas at Christmas,” “Heraclitus on Vacation,” “Lines Written at Flying Point Beach,” “Looking for a Friend in a Crowd of Arriving Passengers,” “Lucky Bastards”
Southern Poetry Review:
“Promenade”
The Times Literary Supplement:
“Last Meal”
Tin House:
“A Word About Transitions”
“Foundling” was selected by Denise Duhamel for
The Best American Poetry 2013
“Here and There” was selected by Kevin Young for
The Best American Poetry 2011
“Unholy Sonnet #1” was reprinted in
Harper’s
The translation of the Hadrian epigraph is by W. S. Merwin and appeared in
Poetry
and in
The Shadow of Sirius
.
For her help with many aspects of this book’s coming into being, my gratitude to Suzannah Gilman.
BY BILLY COLLINS
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
EDITED BY BILLY COLLINS
Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds
(illustrations by David Allen Sibley)
180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day
Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry
B
ILLY
C
OLLINS
is the author of ten collections of poetry, including
Horoscopes for the Dead, Ballistics, The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems, Nine Horses, Sailing Alone Around the Room, Questions About Angels, The Apple That Astonished Paris, The Art of Drowning
, and
Picnic, Lightning
. He is also the editor of
Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry, 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day
, and
Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds
. A distinguished professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York and a distinguished Fellow at the Winter Park Institute of Rollins College, he was Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003 and Poet Laureate of New York State from 2004 to 2006. He divides his time between New York and Florida, and speaks regularly around the country and the world.
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