Billy Wilder

by Kim Bridgford

No children, he said. And they didn’t have them.
No changes, he said, and made the camera his.
Not just the words. He wanted people to believe him,
Out in the waiting dark, where glamor was.

And perhaps that’s what we want — a brief perfection —
A life that takes us from a war and sorrow,
A past that improvises on tomorrow
And makes it beautiful: “Life, camera, action.”

He had found life’s beauty in his art and films;
He had a marriage that he felt was true.
He saw the dream, yet all that overwhelms.
He wanted you to think he gave you you:
The you like him, with wings made out of grime,
The boy who had escaped the war in time.


Kim Bridgford is the new director of the West Chester University Poetry Center and the West Chester University Poetry Conference. She is the founder of The Mezzo Cammin Women Poets Timeline Project, which was launched at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington on March 27, 2010.
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Pat Jones
Published 28 July 2010