Billy Collins’s poem “Memorizing βThe Sun Risingβ by John Donne” is now published in the November 2010 issue of Poetry. Read it here.
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Billy Collins’s four Asian-themed poems were published inΒ issue #5Β ofΒ Cha.
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Category Archives: Poetry
Billy Collins in Poetry
“Tiananmen” by James Fenton
TIANANMEN
by James Fenton
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Tiananmen
Is broad and clean
And you canβt tell
Where the dead have been
Is broad and clean
And you canβt tell
Where the dead have been
And you canβt tell
What happened then
And you canβt speak
Of Tiananmen.
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You must not speak.
You must not think.
You must not dip
Your brush in ink.
You must not say
What happened then,
What happened there.
What happened there
In Tiananmen.
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The cruel men
Are old and deaf
Ready to kill
But short of breath
And they will die
Like other men
And theyβll lie in state
In Tiananmen.
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They lie in state.
They lie in style.
Another lieβs
Thrown on the pile,
Thrown on the pile
By the cruel men
To cleanse the blood
From Tiananmen.
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Truth is a secret.
Keep it dark.
Keep it dark.
In our heart of hearts.
Keep it dark
Till you know when
Truth may return
To Tiananmen.
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Tiananmen
Is broad and clean
And you canβt tell
Where the dead have been
And you canβt tell
When theyβll come again.
Theyβll come again
To Tiananmen.
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βWritten in Hong Kong on 15 June 1989, collected in James Fenton’s Out of Danger, winner of the Whitbread Poetry Prize (1994).
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