Pursued by the mob of townspeople
and the shaky glow of their torches,
he finds refuge crouching under a mossy bridge.

He takes a notepad from his huge jacket
and feels inspiration arriving
like a forking of electricity.

He fingers one of the wooden pegs
the doctor tapped into his temples,
little handlebars of the imagination now,
and his pencil moves in the darkness
to a jostling of vocabulary.

He is starting to write a eulogy
for all the people whose bodies
are now parts of his body.
It opens with the eyes.

- Billy Collins

Reprinted by permission of the
University of Arkansas Press.
Copyright 1988 by Billy Collins.