originally published October 2008

I recall someone once admitting
that all he remembered of Anna Karenina
was something about a picnic basket,

and now, after consuming a book
devoted to the subject of Barcelona--
its people, its history, its complex architecture--

all I remember is the mention
of an albino gorilla, the inhabitant of a park
where the Citadel of the Bourbons once stood.

The sheer paleness of him looms over
all the notable names and dates
as the evening strollers stop before him

and point to show their children.
These locals called him Snowflake,
and here he has been mentioned again in print

in the hope of keeping his pallid flame alive
and helping him, despite his name, to endure
in this poem, where he has found another cage.

Oh, Snowflake,
I had no interest in the capital of Catalonia--
its people, its history, its complex architecture--

no, you were the reason
I kept my light on late into the night,
turning all those pages, searching for you everywhere.

Billy Collins's recent books of poems include Ballistics (2008), The Trouble with Poetry (2005), and Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems (2001). He is also the editor of Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems about Birds, with paintings by David Allen Sibley (2009). He served as U.S. Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003.