Billy Collins
It is easy to find out if a poet is a contemporary poet
And thus avoid the imbroglio of caling him Victorian
Or worse, Elizabethan, or worse yet, medieval.
If you look him up in The Norton Anthology of English Literature
And the year of his birth is followed only by a dash
And a small space for the numerals only spirits know
Then it is safe to say that he is probably alive,
Perhaps out walking in a pale coat, inhaling the night air,
Alive and contemporary as he lights a cigarette
And the smoke billows forth like an amorphous thought
Dissipating over the cold, barge-heavy river he is starting into.
But if the dash in the book is followed by another year,
He is not contemporary, perhaps he is nothing at all
Save what remains on the few pages there for you to read
And maybe read over gain, read aloud to an empty room.
Did you know that it is possible if you read a poem
Enough times, if you read it over and over without stopping
That you can make the author begin to spin gently,
Even affectionately, in his grave?
History is busy tonight in the freezing cemetery
Carving death dates in stone with a hammer and chisel
And closing those parentheses that are used to embrace our lives,
As if we were afterthoughts dropped into a long sentence.
In the light of all this, I am thankful that I can even see
History standing there holding her allegorical tools
And I am amazed at how tall and solemn she looks
And how immaculate are her robes.
