pages exploding with the velocity

When I came across the high-speed photograph 

of a bullet that had just pierced a book—

the pages exploding with the velocity— 

 

I forgot all about the marvels of photography 

and began to wonder which book 

the photographer had selected for the shot. 

 

Many novels sprang to mind 

including those of Raymond Chandler 

where an extra bullet would hardly be noticed. 

 

Nonfiction offered too many choices—

a history of Scottish lighthouses, 

a biography of Joan of Arc and so forth. 

 

Or it could be an anthology of medieval literature, 

the bullet having just beheaded Sir Gawain 

and scattered the band of assorted pilgrims. 

 

But later, as I was drifting off to sleep, 

I realized that the executed book 

was a recent collection of poems written 

 

by someone of whom I was not fond 

and that the bullet must have passed through 

his writing with little resistance 

 

at twenty-eight hundred feet per second, 

through the poems about his childhood 

and the ones about the dreary state of the world, 

 

and then through the author's photograph, 

through the beard, the round glasses, 

and that special poet's hat he loves to wear. 

 

[Billy Collins {1941- } 'Ballistics', from Ballistics]