Hi all, 

Here's a poem I read this weekend that I thought was kind of funny, kind of sad. I read it in the dreaded New Yorker (Katrina told us during our last class that they fact check their poems, which I think is very odd - what do you think?) Anyways, it's written by Billy Collins, and I mostly like the Rolling Stones reference. 

Cosmology by Billy Collins

I never put much stock in that image of the earth

resting on the backs of four elephants

who are standing on the back of a sea turtle,

who is in turn supported by an infinite regression

of turtles disappearing into a bottomless forever.

I mean how could you get them all to stay still?

Now that we are on the subject,

my substitute picture would have the earth

with its entire population of people and things

resting on the head of Keith Richards,

who is holding a Marlboro in one hand

and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in the other.

As long as Keith keeps talking about 

the influence of the blues on the Rolling Stones,

the earth will continue to spin merrily

and revolve in a timely manner around the sun.

But if he changes the subject or even pauses

too long, it’s pretty much curtains for us all.

Unless, of course, one person somehow survives

being hurtled into the frigidity of outer space;

then we would have a movie on our hands—

but wait, there wouldn’t be any hands

to write the script or make the movie,

and no theatres, either, no buttered popcorn, no giant Pepsi.

Putting that aside, let’s imagine Keith

standing on the other Rolling Stones,

who are standing on the shoulders of Muddy Waters,

and, were it not for that endless stack of turtles,

one on top of the other all the way down,

Muddy Waters would be standing on nothing at all.