Budapest by Billy Collins

Billy Collins, former US Poet Laureate and one of America's best-selling poets, reads his poem "Budapest" with animation by Julian Grey of Headgear.



Budapest
by Billy Collins

My pen moves along the page like the snout of a strange animal, shaped like a human arm and dressed in the sleeve of a loose green sweater. I watch it sniffing the paper ceaselessly, intent as any forager that has nothing on its mind but the grubs and insects that will allow it to live another day. It wants only to be here tomorrow, dressed perhaps in a sleeve of a plaid shirt, nose pressed against the page, writing a few more dutiful lines while I gaze out the window and imagine Budapest, or some other city where I have never been.

I hadn´t planned on posting this. Somehow I must have published the draft accidently. This is going to be the last poem by Billy Collins. I guess I have to take care that this blog does´t drift off too far into the literature field.