Billy Collins' Poems on Death

A Wry Collection of Three

Obituaries by Billy Collins
 
These are no pages for the young,
who are better off in one another's arms,
 
nor for those who just need to know
about the price of gold,
or a hurricane that is ripping up the Keys.
 
But eventually you may join
the crowd who turn here first to see
who has fallen in the night,
who has left a shape of air walking in their place.
 
Here is where the final cards are shown.
the age, the cause, the plaque of deeds,
and sometimes an odd scrap of news-
that she collected sugar bowls,
that he played solitaire without any clothes.
 
And all the survivors huddle at the end
under the roof of a paragraph
as if they had sidestepped the flame of death.
 
What better way to place a thin black frame
around the things of the morning-
the hand painted cup,
the hemispheres of a cut orange,
the slant of sunlight on the table?
 
And sometimes a most peculiar pair turns up,
strange roommates lying there
side by side upon the page-
Arthur Godfrey next to Man Ray,
Ken Kesey by the side of Dale Evans.
 
It is enough to bring to mind an ark of death,
not the couples of the animal kingdom,
but rather pairs of men and women
ascending the gangplank two by two,
a surgeon and a model, 
a balloonist and a metal worker,
an archaeologist and an authority on pain.
 
Arm-in-arm, they get onboard
then join the others leaning on the rails,
all saved at last from the awful flood of life-
 
So many of them every day
there would have to be many arks,
an armada to ferry the dead
over the heavy waters that roll beyond the world,
 
and many Noahs too,
bearded and fiercely browed, vigilant up there at every prow



The Dead   by Billy Collins

The dead are always looking down on us, they say.
while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,
they are looking down through the glass bottom boats of heaven
as they row themselves slowly through eternity.

They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,
and when we lie down in a field or on a couch,
drugged perhaps by the hum of a long afternoon,
they think we are looking back at them,
which makes them lift their oars and fall silent
and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes.
 


      No Time  by Billy Collins
 
     In a rush this weekday morning,
     I tap the horn as I speed past the cemetery
     where my parents are buried
     side by side under a smooth slab of granite.
     Then, all day long, I think of him rising up
     to give me that look
     of knowing disapproval
     while my mother calmly tells him to lie back down.