Billy Collins Quote

ThemeIt's a sunny weekday in early May and after a ham sandwichand a cold bottle of beer on the brick terrace,I am consumed by the wish to add somethingto one of the ancient themes–youth dancing with his eyes closed,for example,in the shadows of corruption and death,or the rise and fall of illustrious menstrapped to the turning wheel of mischance and disaster.There is a slight breeze,just enough to bendthe yellow tulips on their stems,but that hardly helps meecho the longing for immortalitydespite the roaring juggernaut of time,or the painful motifof Nature's cyclial returnversus man's blind rush to the grave.I could loosen my shirtand lie down in the soft grass,sweet now after its first cutting,but that would not producea record of the pursuitof the moth of eternal beautyor the despondency that attendsthe eventual dribbleof the once gurgling fountain of creativity.So, as far as great topics go,that seems to leave onlythe fall from exuberant maturityinto sudden, headlong decline–a subject that fills me with silenceand leaves me with no choicebut to spend the rest of the day sniffing the jasmine vineand surrendering to the ivory goveranceof the piano by picking outwith my index fingerthe melody notes of Easy to Love,a song in which Cole Porter expresses,with put-on nonchalance,the hopelessness of a lovebrimming with desireand a hunger for affection,but met only and always with frosty disregard.