While Eating a Pear, by Billy Collins

After we have finished here,

the world will continue its quiet turning,

and the years will still transpire,

but now without their numbers,

and the days and months will pass

without the names of Norse and Roman gods.

*

Time will go by the way it did

before history, pure and unnoticed,

a mystery that arose between the sun and moon

before there was a word

for dawn or noon or midnight,

*

before there were names for the earth’s

uncountable things,

when fruit hung anonymously

from scattered groves of trees,

light on the smooth green side,

shadow on the other.

From “The Art of Drowning” by Billy Collins. (Pittsburgh: $24.95; 95 pp.) Copyright 1995 Reprinted by permission.