And smiling too.
No teeth, but what a grin!
Everyone’s in love with you.
They say Death
Hid his face in his hood
So he could smile too.
Such at Least Is the Story
After St. Sebastian
Had his chest
Pierced by arrows
He was nursed
Back to health
By a rich widow in Rome
With the help
Of a blind servant girl
Whose soft steps
I may have heard
Entering and leaving
My room at night
And whose name
I wish I had known
To call for help in the dark.
Taking a Breather
On the steps of a palatial funeral home
Until a couple of undertakers,
Or whoever these gents happened to be,
Asked me to move, but where to?
In the shop across the street,
The three brides in the window
Swung their pretty heads my way
As if having decided to join me.
Striped pants and black tailcoats,
Pacing back and forth like crows
Over the fresh roadkill, get lost!
I’m not budging from here today.
The Joke
Too long I’ve sought
What I had no name for,
Till one day
I unclenched my fist
And found a grain
Of sand in it.
Whose joke is this?
I couldn’t say.
My hand grew heavy
As I held it out
Like a blind beggar
Thinking he hears steps.
After Saying Your Prayer
You who are fed up with my silence,
If you are still awake at this hour,
Listen to me as I tell you why
I’m afraid of you and keep myself
Carefully hidden in some tree
Where I sit like one of your owls
Brooding as the centuries pass.
A star falls now and then in heaven.
The sea sends another surly wave
Against the rocks, telling me
To stay where I am, even though I’m God.
Ghost Ship
Those blessed moments
that pretend
They’ll stay with us forever--
Soon gone,
without a fare-thee-well.
What’s the rush?
I heard myself say.
You have the right
to remain silent,
The night told me
as I sat in bed
Hatching plans
on how to hold the next
Captive in my head.
I recall a window thrown open
one summer day
On a grand view of the bay
and a cloud in all that blue
As pale as the horse
Death likes to ride.
Always happy to shoot the breeze,
that lone cloud
Was telling me
as it drifted out to sea,
Toward some
ship on the horizon,
That had already
set sail
And was about to vanish
out of sight,
On the way to some port
and country
Without name.
A ghost ship,
Most surely,
but mine all the same.
Last Picnic
Before the fall rains arrive,
Let’s have one more picnic,
Now that the leaves are turning color
And the grass is still green in places.
Bread, cheese and some black grapes
Ought to be enough,
And a bottle of wine to toast the crows
Puzzled to find us sitting here.
If it gets cold--and it will--I’ll hold you close.
Night will come early.
We’ll study the sky hoping for a full moon
To light our way,
And if there isn’t one, we’ll put all our trust
In your book of matches
And my sense of direction
As we go looking for home.
Acknowledgments
These poems were published in the following literary magazines, to whose editors grateful acknowledgment is made: The New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, The Southern Review, Conduit, Field, Literary Matters, The Harvard Advocate, The Threepenny Review, and Salmagundi.
About the Author
CHARLES SIMIC is a poet, essayist, and translator born in Yugoslavia. He has received many literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Griffin Poetry Prize, the MacArthur Fellowship, and the Wallace Stevens Award. Simic is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, and in 2007 he was chosen as poet laureate of the United States. He is professor emeritus at the University of New Hampshire, where he has taught since 1973.
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Poetry by Charles Simic
What the Grass Says (1967)
Somewhere Among Us a Stone Is Taking Notes (1969)
Dismantling the Silence (1971)
Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk (1974)
Charon’s Cosmology (1977)
Classic Ballroom Dances (1980)
Austerities (1982)
Selected Poems, 1963–1983 (1985)
Unending Blues (1986)
The World Doesn’t End: Prose Poems (1989)
The Book of Gods and Devils (1990)
Hotel Insomnia (1990)
A Wedding in Hell: Poems (1994)
Walking the Black Cat: Poems (1996)
Jackstraws: Poems (1999)
Night Picnic (2001)
The Voice at 3:00 A.M.: Selected Late and New Poems (2003)
Selected Poems, 1963–2003 (2004)
My Noiseless Entourage: Poems (2005)
2008: That Little Something: Poems (2008)
Master of Disguises (2010)
New and Selected Poems, 1962–2012 (2013)
The Lunatic (2015)
Scribbled in the Dark (2017)
Copyright
COME CLOSER AND LISTEN. Copyright © 2019 by Charles Simic. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Cover design by Allison Saltzman
Cover art © Jessica Brilli
FIRST EDITION
Digital Edition JULY 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-290848-3
Version 06192019
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-290846-9
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