Reading in a Hammock

Painting by Sandra Hayen


Reading in a Hammock


With one arm raised, I am holding
The Penguin Book of French Verse
over my head,
assuming one of the standard positions
of summer,
looking up into this little sky of words.

Around the edges of the book
is the larger sky,
dotted with clouds,
and some overhanging branches
that appear to be slowly swaying
back and forth,
as if I were the one lying motionless,

calmly thumbing through Verlaine
and Baudelaire
while the world around me
slides from side to side
in the lazy rhythm of a hammock.

Whatever is doing the actual swinging
would matter little to Apollinaire
who thought religion
looked like a hangar on an airfield
and whose angels plucked geese
and wore chef’s hats,
and the drowsier I become
the less it matters to me.

Finally rocked beyond words,
I close the book
on all the drolleries
and the anguishing,
all the poems that have moved
in my hands like butterflies
among the flowers of evil.

Above, a soft light shines through
an opening in the two dark maples
that are the poles of my dangling.
A light so pale and violet
it is impossible to tell
if I am a man of leisure
or a martyr to idleness,
tied to these trees,
condemned to swing gently
in the shade
until dead.


Billy Collins

Posted over on Contemporary Poetry Review