Билли Коллинз. Больше, чем женщина

More Than A Woman 

Ever since I woke up today, 
a song has been playing uncontrollably 
in my head  - a tape looping 

over the spools of the brain,
a rosary in the hands of a frenetic nun, 
mad fan belt of a tune. 

If must have escaped from the radio 
last night on the drive home and tunneled 
while I slept

from my ears to the center of my cortex. 
It is a song so cloying and vapid I won't even 
bother mentioning the title 

but on the plays as if I were a turntable 
covered with dancing children and their spooky 
pantomimes, 

as if I everything I had ever learned was being 
slowly replaced by its slinky chords and the 
puff-balls of its lyrics. 

It played while I watered the plants and continued 
when I brought in the mail and fanned out 
the letters on a table. 

It repeated itself when I took a walk and watched 
from a bridge brown leaves floating in the channels 
of a current. 

Late In the afternoon it seemed to fade, 
but I heard it again at the restaurant when I peered 
in at the lobsters 

lying on the bottom of an illuminated tank which 
was filled to the brim with their copious tears. 

And now as this dark window in the middle 
of the night I am beginning to think 

I could be listening to music of the spheres, 
the sound no one ever hears because 
it has been playing forever, 

only the spheres are colored pool balls, 
and the music is oozing from a jukebox 
whose lights I can just make out through 
the clouds.