"Grave" by Billy Collins=A Poem of Beauty

Read this a couple of times or more and it really grows on you:

Grave

What do you think of my new glasses
I asked as I stood under a shade tree
before the joined grave of my parents,

and what followed was a long silence
that descended on the rows of the dead
and on the fields and the woods beyond,

one of the one hundred kinds of silence
according to the Chinese belief,
each one distinct from the others,

but the differences being so faint
that only a few special monks
were able to tell one from another.

They make you look very scholarly,
I heard my mother say
once I lay down on the ground

and pressed an ear into the soft grass.
Then I rolled over and pressed
my other ear to the ground,

the ear my father likes to speak into,
but he would say nothing,
and I could not find a silence

among the one hundred Chinese silences
that would fit the one that he created
even though I was the one

who had just made up the business
of the one hundred Chinese silences—
the Silence of the Night Boat,

and the Silence of the Lotus,
cousin to the Silence of the Temple Bell
only deeper and softer, like petals, at its farthest edges.

Horoscopes For The Dead / Poetry by Billy Collins

Enjoy! :

Billy Collins: Horoscopes For the Dead

The following is new poetry by Billy Collins. It appears in PEN America 12: Correspondences. Horoscopes For the Dead 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. Horoscopes For the Dead 2 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.   Copyright © 2010 by Billy Collins.  All rights reserved.