Billy Collins (b. 1941, USA)

“Man in Space”

All you have to do is listen to the way a man

sometimes talks to his wife at a table of people

and notice how intent he is on making his point

even though her lower lip is beginning to quiver,

and you will know why the women in science

fiction movies who inhabit a planet of their own

are not pictured making a salad or reading a magazine

when the men from earth arrive in their rocket,

why they are always standing in a semicircle

with their arms folded, their bare legs set apart,

their breasts protected by hard metal disks.

“Earthling”

You have probably come across

those scales in planetariums

that tell you how much you

would weigh on other planets.

You have noticed the fat ones

lingering on the Mars scale

and the emaciated slowing up

the line for Neptune.

As a creature of creature of average weight,

I fail to see the attraction.

Imagine squatting in the wasteland

of Pluto, all five tons of you,

or wandering around Mercury

wondering what to do next with your ounce.

How much better to step onto

the simple bathroom scale,

a happy earthling feeling

the familiar ropes of gravity,

157 pounds standing soaking wet

a respectful distance from the sun.

“The Night House”

Every day the body works in the fields of the world

mending a stone wall

or swinging a sickle through the tall grass—

the grass of civics, the grass of money—

and every night the body curls around itself

and listens for the soft bells of sleep.

But the heart is restless and rises

from the body in the middle of the night,

leaves the trapezoidal bedroom

with its thick, pictureless walls

to sit by herself at the kitchen table

and heat some milk in a pan.

And the mind gets up too, puts on a robe

and goes downstairs, lights a cigarette,

and opens a book on engineering.

Even the conscience awakens

and roams from room to room in the dark,

darting away from every mirror like a strange fish.

And the soul is up on the roof

in her nightdress, straddling the ridge,

singing a song about the wilderness of the sea

until the first rip of pink appears in the sky.

Then, they all will return to sleeping body

the way a flock of birds settles back into a tree,

resuming their daily colloquy,

talking to each other or themselves

even through the heat of long afternoons.

Which is why the body—that house of voices—

Sometimes puts down its metal tongs, its needle, or its pen

to stare into the distance,

to listen to all its names being called