Poetical Quill Souls

Poetical Quill Souls

This blog contains a collection of renowned and young authors from around the world poems in the languages in which they were originally written. Each file includes author’s photo or portrait and brief biography. We offer news and announcements of interest to professional and amateur writers (writing competitions, poetry press, etc) too.

Este blog recoge una selección de poemas de reputados autores y jóvenes promesas de todo el mundo en las lenguas en las que fueron escritos originalmente. Se incluye en cada ficha una breve reseña biográfica del autor y fotos o cuadros de éste. Se complementa el grueso del material con datos de interés para escritores profesionales o aficionados a la literatura (como información sobre certámenes literarios, editoriales dedicadas a la poesía, etc).

Billy Collins

Poetry

Call it a field where the animals
who were forgotten by the Ark
come to graze under the evening clouds.

Or a cistern where the rain that fell
before history trickles over a concrete lip.
However you see it,
this is no place to set up
the three-legged easel of realism

or make a reader climb
over the many fences of a plot,

Let the portly novelist
with his noisy typewriter
describe the city where Francine was born,

how Albert read the paper on the train,
how curtains were blowing in the bedroom.

Let the playwright with her torn cardigan
and a dog curled on the rug
move the characters

from the wings to the stage
to face he many-eyed darkness of the house.

Poetry is not place for that.
We have enough to do
complaining about the price of tobacco,

passing the dribbling ladle,
and singing songs to a bird in a cage.

We are busy doing nothing--
and all we need for that is an afternoon,
a rowboat under a blue sky,

and maybe a man fishing from a stone bridge,
or, better still, nobody on that bridge at all.


Billy Collins, nacido William James Collins (EEUU, 1941). Docente, poeta y editor. Poeta Laureado de Estados Unidos de 2001 a 2003.