ARISTOTLE by Billy Collins.

This is the beginning.

Almost anything can happen.

This is where you find

the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land,

the first word of Paradise Lost on an empty page.

Think of an egg, the letter A,

a woman ironing on a bare stage

as the heavy curtain rises.

This is the very beginning.

The first-person narrator introduces himself,

tells us about his lineage.

The mezzo-soprano stands in the wings.

Here the climbers are studying a map

or pulling on their long woolen socks.

This is early on, years before the Ark, dawn.

The profile of an animal is being smeared

on the wall of a cave,

and you have not yet learned to crawl.

This is the opening, the gambit,

a pawn moving forward an inch.

This is your first night with her,

your first night without her.

This is the first part

where the wheels begin to turn,

where the elevator begins its ascent,

before the doors lurch apart.

This is the middle.

Things have had time to get complicated,

messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore.

Cities have sprouted up along the rivers

teeming with people at cross-purposes—

a million schemes, a million wild looks.

Disappointment unshoulders his knapsack

here and pitches his ragged tent.

This is the sticky part where the plot congeals,

where the action suddenly reverses

or swerves off in an outrageous direction.

Here the narrator devotes a long paragraph

to why Miriam does not want Edward's child.

Someone hides a letter under a pillow.

Here the aria rises to a pitch,

a song of betrayal, salted with revenge.

And the climbing party is stuck on a ledge

halfway up the mountain.

This is the bridge, the painful modulation.

This is the thick of things.

So much is crowded into the middle—

the guitars of Spain, piles of ripe avocados,

Russian uniforms, noisy parties,

lakeside kisses, arguments heard through a wall—

too much to name, too much to think about.

And this is the end,

the car running out of road,

the river losing its name in an ocean,

the long nose of the photographed horse

touching the white electronic line.

This is the colophon, the last elephant in the parade,

the empty wheelchair,

and pigeons floating down in the evening.

Here the stage is littered with bodies,

the narrator leads the characters to their cells,

and the climbers are in their graves.

It is me hitting the period

and you closing the book.

It is Sylvia Plath in the kitchen

and St. Clement with an anchor around his neck.

This is the final bit

thinning away to nothing.

This is the end, according to Aristotle,

what we have all been waiting for,

what everything comes down to,

the destination we cannot help imagining,

a streak of light in the sky,

a hat on a peg, and outside the cabin, falling leaves.

A Billy Collins Lesson: Reading like a tourist.
1 After reading the title, where do you think we are going?

     The title of the poem is Aristotle. Aristotle is a well renowned philosopher so I'm guessing we are going on a journey of life reflecting all the decisions we made and the ones we will wisely choose in the future. It seems more serious and reflective of ones decisions, bad decisions and that's not fun.

2. After reading the first stanza, where do we seem to be going?

   We have just been born and we are going to discover the wonders of life, what it is to be alive, we are going to going to be something extraordinary... a human being.

We are going deep into the histories of past times, "This is early on, years before the ark, dawn."

3. What sights do we see?

   We see curtains symbolising the beginning of the day. We see alot as "the mezzo-soprano stands in the wings" symbolising the creation of music as an art form that brings harmony into life.

Here we see the beginning of every feeling, situation and practice that ever came to be.

4. Where will we go next?
 
   Next we go into adolescence separated from adulthood by a thin line of perceptions and ignorance set by society that choses to disregard the youthful young innovators of our century.

5.  Do we need special clothes?, What kind? Are they comfortable?

   Social media, culture and religion influence what we wear.

Most of the  times social media  promotes clothes that are exposing and degrading especially for women.

6. Whom do we meet along the way or who goes with us?

   We then know pain, we meet friends who turn into enemies and disappointment that stretches out as far as the Atlantic ocean. We befriend revenge and his heartless mother betrayal.

7. Are there unfamiliar words we need to translate during thus trip?

  Aria- any expressive melody made by one voice with or without orchestral accompaniment usually in operas.

8. Do we travel in time? What time have we travelled  to?

  We have travelled through the beginning, the middle and the end of time. We feel as if everything we have done has amounted to nothing and everything. We were born to die. Nothing lasts forever, death is inevitable no matter what you do.

9. Does the weather change?

The weather changes throughout the journey; physically as we travel to different countries “the guitars of Spain,” “Russian uniforms” and metaphorically as the cold feeling we get when we are betrayed or shut out by someone or the warm feeling when we connect with a soul we feel we have known a lifetime ago.

10. Where have arrived next?

  

      “This is the end,” Whether it’s fun or not depends on you and how you take it. 

11. Whom do we meet here?

     Here we meet the ‘dark of ages past’. All our regrets and fears come true in due time.

12. What do the people seem to be doing?

   People seem to be forgetting but yet they remember their youth. What it was like to be in love and be able to run at full speed.