Billy Collins makes me jump up and down. This is from his book Nine Horses, called "Poetry":
"Let the playwright with her torn cardigan
and a dog curled on the rug
move the characters
from the wings of the stage
to face the many-eyed darkness of the house.
Poetry is no place for that.
We have enough to do
complaining about the price of tobacco,
passing the dripping 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."
"Let the playwright with her torn cardigan
and a dog curled on the rug
move the characters
from the wings of the stage
to face the many-eyed darkness of the house.
Poetry is no place for that.
We have enough to do
complaining about the price of tobacco,
passing the dripping 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."