New and Selected Poems

by Charles Simic

  I like it best when we do not say a word.

  When we lie side by side

  Like two lovers after their passion is spent.

  Once again, day is breaking.

  A small bird in the trees is pouring her heart out

  At the miracle of the coming light.

  It hurts.

  The beauty of a night spent sleepless.

  The Toad

  It’ll be a while before my friends

  See me in the city,

  A while before we roam the streets

  Late at night

  Shouting each other’s names

  To point out some sight too wonderful

  Or too terrifying

  To give it a name in a hurry.

  I’m staying put in the country,

  Rising early,

  Listening to the birds

  Greet the light,

  And when they fall quiet,

  To the wind in the leaves

  Which are as numerous here

  As the crowds in your city.

  God never made a day as beautiful as today,

  A neighbor was saying.

  I sat in the shade after she left

  Mulling that one over,

  When a toad hopped out of the grass

  And, finding me harmless,

  Hopped over my foot on his way to the pond.

  Summer Light

  It likes empty churches

  At the blue hour of dawn.

  The shadows parting

  Like curtains in a sideshow,

  The eyes of the crucified

  Staring down from the cross

  As if seeing his bloody feet

  For the very first time.

  The Invisible

  1

  It was always here.

  Its vast terrors concealed

  By this costume party

  Of flowers and birds

  And children playing in the garden.

  Only the leaves tell the truth.

  They rustle darkly,

  Then fall silent as if listening

  To a dragonfly

  Who may know a lot more of the invisible,

  Or why else would its wings be

  So translucent in the light,

  So swift to take flight,

  One barely notices

  It’s been here and gone.

  2

  Don’t the shadows know something about it?

  The way they, too, come and go

  As if paying a visit to that other world

  Where they do what they do

  Before hurrying back to us.

  Just today I was admiring the one I cast

  As I walked alone in the street

  And was about to engage it in conversation

  On this very topic

  When it took leave of me suddenly.

  Shadow, I said, what message

  Will you bring back to me,

  And will it be full of dark ambiguities

  I can’t even begin to imagine

  As I make my slow way in the midday sun?

  3

  It may be hiding behind a door

  In some office building,

  Where one day you found yourself

  After hours

  With no one to ask for directions,

  Among the hundreds of doors

  All lacking information what sort of business,

  What sort of drudgery goes on

  Inside its narrow, poorly lit rooms.

  Some detective agency

  That’ll find God for a small fee?

  Some company ready to insure you,

  Should one day,

  Despite the promises of your parish priest,

  You turn up in hell?

  The long hallway ends at a window

  Where even the light of the dying day

  Seems old and dusty.

  It understands what waiting is,

  And when found out

  Appears surprised to see you here.

  4

  The moment you shut off the lamp,

  Here they are again,

  The two dead people

  You called your parents.

  You’d hoped you’d see tonight

  The girl you loved once,

  And that other one who let you

  Slip a hand under her skirt.

  Instead, here’s that key in a saucer of small change

  That wouldn’t open any lock,

  The used condom you found in church,

  The lame crow your neighbor kept.

  Here’s the fly you once tortured,

  A rock you threw at your best friend,

  The pig that let out a scream

  As the knife touched its throat.

  5

  People here still tell stories

  About a blind old man

  Who rolled dice on the sidewalk

  And paid children

  In the neighborhood

  To tell him what number came up.

  When they were away in school,

  He’d ask anyone

  Whose steps he heard,

  The mailman making his rounds,

  The undertakers loading a coffin in their black wagon,

  And you, too, mister,

  Should you happen to come along.

  6

  Dark evening, gray old tenement,

  A white cat in one window,

  An old man eating his dinner in another.

  Everyone else hidden from view,

  Like the one who waits for the tub

  To fill up with hot water

  While she undresses before a mirror

  Already beginning to steam over.

  Imagination, devil’s helper,

  Made me glimpse her two breasts

  As I hurried by with my face tucked in my collar,

  Because the wind was raw.

  7

  Dear Miss Russell:

  Nights, you took me on a private tour

  Of the empty town library.

  I could hardly keep up

  As you darted along the rows of books,

  Whispering their names,

  Pointing out the ones I ought to read,

  Then forgetting all about me,

  Pulling the light cord

  And leaving me in the dark

  To grope for a book

  Among the shelves,

  Surely the wrong one,

  As I was soon to learn

  At the checkout desk

  Under your pitying gaze

  That followed me into the street

  Where I dared not stop

  To see what I held in my hand

  Until I had rounded the corner.

  8

  A rusty key from a cigar box full of keys

  In a roadside junk shop.

  The one I held on to a long time

  Before I let it slip

  Through my fingers.

  Most likely, when it was still in use,

  The reclusive author

  Of “The Minister’s Black Veil”

  Was still cooped up

  In his mother’s house in Salem.

  It opened a small drawer

  With a stack of yellowed letters

  In a dresser with a mirror

  That gave back a pale face

  With a pair of feverish eyes

  In a room with a view

  Of black, leafless trees

  And red clouds hurrying at sunset,

  Where soon tears fell

  Causing the key to go rusty.

  9

  O Persephone, is it true what they say,

  That everything that is beautiful,

  Even for one fleeting moment,

  Descends to you, never to return?

  Dressmaker pinning a red dress in a store window,

  Old man walking your sickly old dog,

  Even you little children holding hands

&
nbsp; As you cross the busy street with your teacher,

  What hope do you have for us today?

  With the sky darkening so early,

  The first arriving flakes of snow,

  Falling here and there, then everywhere.

  10

  Invisible one, watching the snow

  Through a dark window

  From a row of dark schoolhouse windows,

  Making sure the snowflakes fall

  In proper order

  Where they were fated to fall

  In the gray yard,

  And hush the moment they do.

  The crow nodding his head

  As he walks by

  Must’ve been a professor of philosophy

  In a previous life

  Who despite changed circumstances

  Still opens his beak

  From time to time

  As if to address his adoring students,

  And seeing nothing but snow,

  Looks up puzzled

  At one of the dark windows.

  11

  Bird comforting the afflicted

  With your song,

  The one or two lying awake

  In the vast slumber

  Of small town and countryside,

  Who know nothing of each other

  As they listen intently

  To every little tweet

  Afraid they’ll do something

  To make it hush.

  In the cool, silvery light,

  The outline of the window visible,

  Some trees in the yard

  About to let go of the night,

  The others in no big hurry.

  XIII

  from THE VOICE AT 3:00 A.M.

  Postcard from S.

  So far I’ve met here two Homers and one Virgil.

  The town is like a living anthology of classic literature.

  Thunder and lightning almost every afternoon.

  When neighbors meet, they slap mosquitoes

  On each other’s foreheads and go off red in the face.

  I’m lying in a hammock next to a burning barn

  Watching a birch tree in the yard.

  One minute it wrestles with the wind and smoke,

  The next it raises its fists to curse the gods.

  That, of course, makes it a Trojan

  To the Greeks just arriving on a fire engine.

  Empty Barbershop

  In pursuit of happiness, you may yet

  Draw close to it momentarily

  In one of these two leather-bound chairs

  With the help of scissors and a comb,

  Draped to the chin with a long white sheet,

  While your head slips through

  The invisible barber’s greasy fingers

  Making your hair stand up straight,

  While he presses the razor to your throat,

  Causing your eyes to spring open

  As you discern in the mirror before you

  The full length of the empty barbershop

  With two vacant chairs and past them

  The street, commensurately empty,

  Except for the pressed and blurred face

  Of someone straining to look inside.

  Grayheaded Schoolchildren

  Old men have bad dreams,

  So they sleep little.

  They walk on bare feet

  Without turning on the lights,

  Or they stand leaning

  On gloomy furniture

  Listening to their hearts beat.

  The one window across the room

  Is black like a blackboard.

  Every old man is alone

  In this classroom, squinting

  At that fine chalk line

  That divides being-here

  From being-here-no-more.

  No matter. It was a glass of water

  They were going to get,

  But not just yet.

  They listen for mice in the walls,

  A car passing on the street,

  Their dead fathers shuffling past them

  On their way to the kitchen.

  Serving Time

  Another dreary day in time’s invisible

  Penitentiary, making license plates

  With lots of zeros, walking lockstep counter-

  clockwise in the exercise yard or watching

  The lights dim when some poor fellow,

  Who could as well be me, gets fried.

  Here on death row, I read a lot of books.

  First it was law, as you’d expect.

  Then came history, ancient and modern.

  Finally philosophy—all that being-and-nothingness stuff.

  The more I read, the less I understand.

  Still, other inmates call me professor.

  Did I mention that we had no guards?

  It’s a closed book who locks

  And unlocks the cell doors for us.

  Even the executions we carry out

  By ourselves, attaching the wires,

  Playing warden, playing chaplain

  All because a little voice in our head

  Whispers something about our last appeal

  Being denied by God himself.

  The others hear nothing, of course,

  But that, typically, you may as well face it,

  Is how time runs things around here.

  Autumn Sky

  In my great-grandmother’s time,

  All one needed was a broom

  To get to see places

  And give the geese a chase in the sky.

  •

  The stars know everything,

  So we try to read their minds.

  As distant as they are,

  We choose to whisper in their presence.

  •

  Oh, Cynthia,

  Take a clock that has lost its hands

  For a ride.

  Get me a room at Hotel Eternity

  Where Time likes to stop now and then.

  •

  Come, lovers of dark corners,

  The sky says,

  And sit in one of my dark corners.

  There are tasty little zeros

  In the peanut dish tonight.

  Separate Truths

  Night fell without asking

  For our permission.

  Mary had a headache,

  And my eyes hurt

  From squinting at the newspapers.

  We could still make out

  A few old trees in the yard.

  They take it as it comes.

  Separate truths

  Do not interest them.

  We’ll have to run for it, I said,

  And had no idea what I meant.

  The coming of the inevitable,

  What a strange bliss that is,

  And I had no idea what she meant.

  Late September

  The mail truck goes down the coast

  Carrying a single letter.

  At the end of a long pier

  The bored seagull lifts a leg now and then

  And forgets to put it down.

  There is a menace in the air

  Of tragedies in the making.

  Last night you thought you heard television

  In the house next door.

  You were sure it was some new

  Horror they were reporting,

  So you went out to find out.

  Barefoot, wearing just shorts.

  It was only the sea sounding weary

  After so many lifetimes

  Of pretending to be rushing off somewhere

  And never getting anywhere.

  This morning, it felt like Sunday.

  The heavens did their part

  By casting no shadow along the boardwalk

  Or the row of vacant cottages,

  Among them a small church

  With a dozen gray tombstones huddled close

  As if they, too, had the shivers.

&
nbsp; XIV

  NEW POEMS

  I’m Charles

  Swaying handcuffed

  On an invisible scaffold,

  Hung by the unsayable

  Little something

  Night and day take turns

  Paring down further.

  My mind’s a ghost house

  Open to the starlight.

  My back’s covered with graffiti

  Like an elevated train.

  Snowflakes swarm

  Around my bare head

  Choking with laughter

  At my last-minute contortions

  To write something on my chest