DEDICATION
FOR HELEN
EPIGRAPH
It’s not as though I had a cow to milk,
or do I?
—James Tate
CONTENTS
COVER
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I DARK NIGHT’S FLY CATCHER
SEEING THINGS
AT THE VACANCY SIGN
THAT ELUSIVE SOMETHING
FAIR-WEATHER FRIENDS
UNINVITED GUEST
ALL GONE INTO THE DARK
THE WEEK
TO BOREDOM
FISH OUT OF WATER
ILLEGIBLE SCRIBBLE
HISTORY
SIGNS OF THE TIMES
IN THE COURTROOM
MISSED CHANCE
II JANUARY
IN WONDER
IN THE SNOW
ANCIENT COMBATANT
THE NIGHT AND THE COLD
ALL THINGS IN PRECIPITOUS DECLINE
THE CRICKET ON MY PILLOW
WINTER FLY
BARE TREES
ROADHOUSE
STRAY HEN
THE WHITE CAT
THE ONE WHO DISAPPEARED
THE MESSAGE
BIRDS KNOW
III THE MOVIE
BELLADONNA
ON CLOUD NINE
SWEPT AWAY
MY GODDESS
THE LUCKY COUPLE
DEAD SURE
THE LOVER
THE SAINT
THE ART OF HAPPINESS
IN SOMEONE’S BACKYARD
CHERRY PIE
A DAY CAME
HAUNTED HOUSE
THE BLIZZARD
IV THE INFINITE
LAST BET FOR THE NIGHT
DESCRIPTION
MYSTERY THEATER
SHADOW ON THE WALL
LOOKING FOR A PLACE TO HIDE
SCRIBBLED IN THE DARK
IN THE GREEK CHURCH
THE MASQUE
MANY A HOLY MAN
THE LIFEBOAT
PAST THE CEMETARY
STAR ATLAS
NIGHT OWLS
AT TENDER MERCY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY CHARLES SIMIC
CREDITS
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
These poems were first published in the following magazines, to whose editors grateful acknowledgment is made: The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, Boulevard, London Review of Books, Tin House, The Nation, Boston Review, Monkey Business, The Threepenny Review, A Public Space, and the New York Times Magazine.
I
DARK NIGHT’S FLY CATCHER
Thatched myself
Over with words.
Night after night
Thatched myself
Anew against
The pending eraser.
SEEING THINGS
I came here in my youth,
A wind toy on a string.
Saw a street in hell and one in paradise.
Saw a room with a light in it so ailing
It could’ve been leaning on a cane.
Saw an old man in a tailor shop
Kneel before a bride with pins between his lips.
Saw the President swear on the Bible
while snow fell around him.
Saw a pair of lovers kiss in an empty church
And a naked man run out of a building
waving a gun and sobbing.
Saw kids wearing Halloween masks
Jump from one roof to another at sunset.
Saw a van full of stray dogs look back at me.
Saw a homeless woman berating God
And a blind man with a guitar singing:
“Oh Lord remember me,
AT THE VACANCY SIGN
There was a small room in the back
With a bed and a chair,
And a grim old woman
Who unlocked the door
And made herself scarce,
Leaving you there alone
With a thin ray of sunlight
You could imagine talking to
Every time it dropped in for a visit,
And falling quiet
As it got ready to leave.
THAT ELUSIVE SOMETHING
Was it in the smell of freshly baked bread
That came to greet you out of the bakery?
The sight of two girls playing with dolls
On the steps of a building blackened by fire?
In this city you might’ve seen once
In a dream or knew in another life,
This street calm as a sharpshooter
Taking his aim in the bright sunlight,
Perhaps at that woman turning a corner,
Pushing a baby carriage ahead of her,
You ran after, as if the child in it was you,
And found yourself lost afterwards
In a crowd of strangers, feeling like someone
Stepping out after a long illness
Who can’t help but see the world with his heart
And hopes not to forget what he saw.
FAIR-WEATHER FRIENDS
Eddie with flowing locks, plus Joey and me,
Like Jesus and two thieves
Crucified side by side on the blackboard,
Our backs slumped in defeat
While awaiting our punishment.
The Lord took pity on them, wiped
Their souls clean with a sponge.
Not mine. I remained where I was
Holding on to a piece of chalk
Long after they had all gone home.
Night already fallen everywhere,
Hard to be sure what numbers
Still remain there to be added
Or subtracted or whether someone
Is watching as I give them a last try.
UNINVITED GUEST
Dark thought on a sunny day
Languid miss in distress
Everyone’s blind date
With a look of having a secret
Knife drawer in a madman’s kitchen
A crow flying round my head
Suicide’s friend
Soft-footed gravedigger of our hopes
Hell’s night nurse
Bending over a cradle.
ALL GONE INTO THE DARK
Where’s that blind street preacher who said
The world will end Thursday at noon?
Or that woman who walked down Madison
Stark naked and holding her head high?
Where’s the poet Delmore Schwartz
Arguing with a ghost on a park bench?
Where’s the drunk young man on crutches
Wanting to kill more Vietnamese?
Mr. Undertaker, savoring a buttered roll
In a window of a coffee shop, you ought to know—
Or are you, like the rest of us, in the dark
As you make ready to bury another stiff?
THE WEEK
Monday comes around with a new tattoo
It won’t show us and here’s Tuesday
Walking its latest nightmare on a leash
And Wednesday blind as the rain tapping
On a windowpane and Thursday sipping
Bad coffee served by a pretty waitress
And Friday lost in a confusion of sad
And happy faces and Saturday flashing
Like a pinball machine in the morgue
And Sunday with a head of crucified Christ
Hanging sideways in a bathroom mirror
TO BORED
OM
I’m the child of rainy Sundays.
I watched time crawl
Like an injured fly
Over the wet windowpane.
Or waited for a branch
On a tree to stop shaking,
While Grandmother knitted
Making a ball of yarn
Roll over like a kitten at her feet.
I knew every clock in the house
Had stopped ticking
And that this day will last forever.
FISH OUT OF WATER
That’s what you always were, my friend.
Just the other day
A stuffed parrot perched
In splendor of an antiques store,
Gave you a dirty look
As you stuck your nose in.
Like running into a mirror
One night crossing a vast
And empty shopping mall
With an odd-looking stranger
Surprised to find you there.
Or driving past a scarecrow
Someone relocated
To a graveyard near your home
And hearing his laughter
Long after you went back the next day
And found him gone.
ILLEGIBLE SCRIBBLE
These rags the spirit borrows
To clothe itself
Against the chill of mortality.
O barbed wire of crossed-out words,
Crown of thorns,
Camp meeting of dead wall reveries,
Spilled worry beads,
Fortune-teller’s coffee dregs,
My footholds in the abyss.
HISTORY
Our life stories are scary and droll,
Like masks children wear on Halloween
As they go from door to door
Holding the little ones by the hand
In some neighborhood long torn down,
Where people ate their dinners
In angry silence or quarreling loudly,
When there was a knock on the door,
A soft knock a shy boy makes
Dressed in a costume his mother made.
What’s this you’re wearing, kid?
And where did you get that mask?
That made everyone laugh here
While you stood staring at us,
As if you knew already we were history.
SIGNS OF THE TIMES
For a mind full of disquiet
A trembling roadside weed is Cassandra,
And so is the sight
Of a boarded up public library,
The rows of books beyond its windows
Unopened for years,
The sickly old dog on its steps,
And a man slumped next to him,
His mouth working mutely
Like an actor unable to recall his lines
At the end of some tragic farce.
IN THE COURTROOM
The judge appears to be asleep:
His heavy eyelids are lowered
And his black glasses rest
On a thick stack of documents.
Take your shoes off as you enter,
So as not to disturb his rest,
But keep your white socks on.
The floor of the courtroom is cold.
What’s left of the fading daylight
Is about to make its quiet exit,
Leaving the darkness in our souls
To do what it damn pleases here.
MISSED CHANCE
One afternoon looking for a shortcut,
I found myself on a street
That I’d never known was there,
And might’ve gone no further—
With my foot arrested in midstride
Before a dogwood tree in flower,
Towering in someone’s yard
And a few brightly colored toys
Scattered along their driveway,
But no child or anyone else in sight.
One caged bird chirping in a window
Who may’ve been in on the secret?
I didn’t wait to find out, but hurried away
Wherever it seemed more important
For me to show my face that day.
II
JANUARY
Children’s fingerprints
On a frozen window
Of a small schoolhouse.
An empire, I read somewhere,
Maintains itself through
The cruelty of its prisons.
IN WONDER
I cursed someone or something
Tossing and turning all night—
Or so I was told, though I had no memory
Who it could be, so I stared
At the world out there in wonder.
The frost lay pretty on the bushes
Like tinsel over a Christmas tree,
When a limo as long as a hearse
Crept into view stopping at each
Mailbox as if in search of a name,
And not finding it sped away,
Its tires squealing like a piglet
Lifted into the air by a butcher.
IN THE SNOW
Tracks of someone lost,
Bleakly preoccupied,
Meandering blindly
In these here woods,
Licking his wounds
And crunching the snow,
As he trudges on,
Bereft and baffled,
In mounting terror
With no way out,
Jinxed at every turn,
A mystery to himself.
ANCIENT COMBATANT
Veteran of foreign wars,
Stiff in arm and leg,
His baggy pants billowing in the wind
Salutes a crow in a tree,
And resumes his stroll
Past a small graveyard,
Swerving and waving his arms
As if besieged by ghosts
Lurking among headstones,
Waiting to accost him
And make a clean breast
Before he slips out of sight.
The tiger lilies bemused.
The curving dirt road in his wake
Deep in silence
And prey to lengthening shadows.
THE NIGHT AND THE COLD
Torturers with happy faces,
You’ve made a prisoner strip naked
And stand strung with electric wires
Like a Christmas tree
In a department store window
Next to a smiling family gathered
Around a fake brick fireplace.
And as for you, men and women
Sprawled in dark doorways,
Along this street I’m walking,
Stuff your clothes with more newspaper,
The night will be long and cold.
ALL THINGS IN PRECIPITOUS DECLINE
Like a pickup with its wheels gone,
And some rusty and disassembled
Antique stoves and refrigerators
In a front yard choked with weeds,
Outside a shack with a plastic sheet
Draped over one of its windows,
Where a beer bottle went through
One star-studded night in June—
Or was it a shotgun we heard?
The police inquiry, if there is one,
Is proceeding at a snail’s pace,
In the meantime, the old recluse
Got himself a bad-tempered mutt
To keep his junk company and bark
At all comers, including the mailman
Leaving a rare letter in the mailbox.
THE CRICKET ON MY PILLOW
His emaciated head and legs
Speak of long fasts, frantic prayers,
Dark nights of the soul,
And other unknown torments,
Before he found refuge in our home
From that madman out there
Who t
hrew over his bed
A heavy blanket of snow.
WINTER FLY
You ought to live in a palace like a king
And not shiver on my kitchen wall,
Have a bed and chair made to measure
And a radio playing the latest hits
The flies in Dakar and Rio are humming,
While servants serve you pastries
On plates bearing your coat of arms,
And your courtiers look to catch you
A lady companion from among the flies
Grooming themselves on a dead dog.
BARE TREES
They are fans of horror film
In the fading light of a November day,
The gray surface of the pond
Is a movie screen they are watching.
The bare branches moving in it,
Are like the fingers of the blind
Reaching to touch the face of someone
Who’d been calling out to them
In the voice of geese flying over,
The shots of a hunting rifle,
And a dog barking outside a trailer
For someone to hurry and let him in.
ROADHOUSE
The news of the world is always old.
Nothing new ever happens,
The innocent get slaughtered
While some guy on TV makes excuses,
And the bartender refills our drinks,
His left hand clasped behind
His arching back, either maimed
By a dog or wielding a blackjack.
Our wars, it seems, are not going well.
A senator got caught soliciting sex
In a public bathroom at an airport,
And rain and snow are on the way.
STRAY HEN
The hounds of hell are barking again,
Better look for a tree to climb,
Befriend a rat slipping into a sewer,
The kite someone set free in the sky.
The watermelons we saw last summer
Falling out of a truck and breaking