The map of our days
There really is no finer day than a day when The New Yorker arrives with not only a profile of Amy Winehouse, but with a new poem by The Man, to boot. That’s a day worth wearing shoes for, worth sitting up straight for, worth making cantaloupe and honeydew cupcakes topped with white chocolate-cardamom butter cream and chiffonade of mint for.
Thanks to Rennix who passed along the news that I might oughta wanta take a peek in this week’s New Yorker, not only for this glimpse into the future–and our present–but also for the very thought that a new collection of poems by Billy might be in the making. Hope springs eternal, even in times of great fever.
The Future
and it will take many days and nights—
I would like to believe others will be waiting
and might even want to know how it was.
So I will reminisce about a particular sky
or a woman in a white bathrobe
or the time I visited a narrow strait
where a famous naval battle had taken place.
Then I will spread out on a table
a large map of my world
and explain to the people of the future
in their pale garments what it was like—
how mountains rose between the valleys
and this was called geography,
how boats loaded with cargo plied the rivers
and this was known as commerce,
how the people from this pink area
crossed over into this light-green area
and set fires and killed whoever they found
and this was called history—
and they will listen, mild-eyed and silent,
as more of them arrive to join the circle
like ripples moving toward,
not away from, a stone tossed into a pond.
-Billy Collins
