You are so beautiful and I am a fool <br />to be in love with you <br />is a theme that keeps coming up <br />in songs and poems. <br />There seems to be no room for variation. <br />I have never heard anyone sing <br />I am so beautiful <br />and you are a fool to be in love with me, <br />even though this notion has surely <br />crossed the minds of women and men alike. <br />You are so beautiful, too bad you are a fool <br />is another one you don't hear. <br />Or, you are a fool to consider me beautiful. <br />That one you will never hear, guaranteed. <br /> <br />For no particular reason this afternoon <br />I am listening to Johnny Hartman <br />whose dark voice can curl around <br />the concepts on love, beauty, and foolishness <br />like no one else's can. <br />It feels like smoke curling up from a cigarette <br />someone left burning on a baby grand piano <br />around three o'clock in the morning; <br />smoke that billows up into the bright lights <br />while out there in the darkness <br />some of the beautiful fools have gathered <br />around little tables to listen, <br />some with their eyes closed, <br />others leaning forward into the music <br />as if it were holding them up, <br />or twirling the loose ice in a glass, <br />slipping by degrees into a rhythmic dream. <br /> <br />Yes, there is all this foolish beauty, <br />borne beyond midnight, <br />that has no desire to go home, <br />especially now when everyone in the room <br />is watching the large man with the tenor sax <br />that hangs from his neck like a golden fish. <br />He moves forward to the edge of the stage <br />and hands the instrument down to me <br />and nods that I should play. <br />So I put the mouthpiece to my lips <br />and blow into it with all my living breath. <br />We are all so foolish, <br />my long bebop solo begins by saying, <br />so damn foolish <br />we have become beautiful without even knowing it.<br /><br />Billy Collins<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/nightclub/
