New and Selected Poems

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New and Selected Poems Page 2

by Charles Simic


  I have seen sparks fly out

  When two stones are rubbed,

  So perhaps it is not dark inside after all;

  Perhaps there is a moon shining

  From somewhere, as though behind a hill—

  Just enough light to make out

  The strange writings, the star charts

  On the inner walls.

  Poem Without a Title

  I say to the lead,

  “Why did you let yourself

  Be cast into a bullet?

  Have you forgotten the alchemists?

  Have you given up hope

  Of turning into gold?”

  Nobody answers.

  Lead. Bullet.

  With names like that

  The sleep is deep and long.

  Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites

  Great are the Hittites.

  Their ears have mice and mice have holes.

  Their dogs bury themselves and leave the bones

  To guard the house. A single weed holds all their storms

  Until the spiderwebs spread over the heavens.

  There are bits of straw in their lakes and rivers

  Looking for drowned men. When a camel won’t pass

  Through the eye of one of their needles,

  They tie a house to its tail. Great are the Hittites.

  Their fathers are in cradles, their newborn make war.

  To them lead floats, a leaf sinks. Their god is the size

  Of a mustard seed so that he can be quickly eaten.

  •

  They also piss against the wind,

  Pour water in a leaky bucket,

  Strike two tears to make fire,

  And have tongues with bones in them,

  Bones of a wolf gnawed by lambs.

  •

  They are also called you only live once,

  They are called a small leak

  Will sink a great ship, they are called

  Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, they are called

  You can’t take it to the grave with you.

  It’s that hum in your left ear,

  A sigh rising from deep within you,

  A dream in which you keep falling forever,

  The hour in which you sit up in bed

  As though someone has called your name.

  No one knows why the Hittites exist,

  Still, when two are whispering

  One of them is listening.

  •

  Did they catch the falling knife?

  They caught it like a fly with closed mouths.

  Did they balance the last egg?

  They struck the egg with a bone so it won’t howl.

  Did they wait for dead man’s shoes?

  The shoes went in at one ear and out the other.

  Did they wipe the blood from their mousetraps?

  They burnt the blood to warm themselves.

  Are they cold with no pockets in their shrouds?

  If the sky falls, they shall have clouds for supper.

  What do they have for us

  To put in our pipes and smoke?

  They have the braid of a beautiful girl

  That drew a team of cattle

  And the picture of him who slept

  With dogs and rose with fleas

  Searching for its trace in the sky.

  •

  And so, there are fewer and fewer of them now.

  Who wrote their name on paper

  And burnt the paper? Who put snake bones

  In their pillows? Who threw nail parings

  In their soup? Who made them walk

  Under the ladder? Who stuck pins

  In their snapshots?

  The king of warts and his brother evil eye.

  Bone-lazy and her sister rabbit’s-foot.

  Cross-your-fingers and their father dog star.

  Knock-on-wood and his mother hellfire.

  Because the tail can’t wag the cow.

  Because the woods can’t fly to the dove.

  Because the stones haven’t said their last word.

  Because dunghills rise and empires fall.

  •

  They are leaving behind

  All the silver spoons

  Found inside their throats at birth,

  A hand they bit because it fed them,

  Two rats from a ship that is still sinking,

  A collection of various split hairs,

  The leaf they turned over too late.

  •

  Here comes a forest in wolf’s clothing,

  The wise hen bows to the umbrella.

  When the bloodshot evening meets the bloodshot night,

  They tell each other bloodshot tales.

  That bare branch over them speaks louder than words.

  The moon is worn threadbare.

  I repeat: lean days don’t come singly,

  It takes all kinds to make the sun rise.

  The night is each man’s castle.

  Don’t let the castle out of the bag.

  Wind in the valley, wind in the high hills,

  Practice will make this body fit this bed.

  •

  All roads lead

  Out of a sow’s ear

  To what’s worth

  Two in the bush.

  Invention of Nothing

  I didn’t notice

  while I wrote here

  that nothing remains of the world

  except my table and chair.

  And so I said:

  (to hear myself talk)

  Is this the tavern

  without a glass, wine, or waiter

  where I’m the long-awaited drunk?

  The color of nothing is blue.

  I strike it with my left hand and the hand disappears.

  Why am I so quiet then

  and so happy?

  I climb on the table

  (the chair is gone already)

  I sing through the throat

  of an empty beer bottle.

  Errata

  Where it says snow

  read teeth marks of a virgin

  Where it says knife read

  you passed through my bones

  like a police whistle

  Where it says table read horse

  Where it says horse read my migrant’s bundle

  Apples are to remain apples

  Each time a hat appears

  think of Isaac Newton

  reading the Old Testament

  Remove all periods

  They are scars made by words

  I couldn’t bring myself to say

  Put a finger over each sunrise

  it will blind you otherwise

  That damn ant is still stirring

  Will there be time left to list

  all errors to replace

  all hands guns owls plates

  all cigars ponds woods and reach

  that beer bottle my greatest mistake

  the word I allowed to be written

  when I should have shouted

  her name

  The Bird

  A bird calls me

  From a tall tree

  In my dream,

  Calls me from the pink twig of daylight,

  From the long shadow

  That inches each night closer to my heart,

  Calls me from the edge of the world.

  I give her my dream.

  She dyes it red.

  I give her my breath.

  She turns it into rustling leaves.

  She calls me from the highest cloud.

  Her chirp

  Like a match flickering

  In a new grave.

  •

  Bird, shaped

  Like the insides

  Of a yawning mouth.

  At daybreak,

  When the sky turns clear and lucent

  Like the water in which

  They baptized a small child,

 
I climbed toward you.

  The earth grew smaller underneath.

  The howling emptiness

  Chilled my feet,

  And then my heart.

  •

  Later, I dozed off

  In the woods,

  Nestled in a small clearing

  With the mist for a lover,

  And dreamt I had

  The stern eye

  Of that bird

  Watching me sleep.

  Two Riddles

  Hangs by a thread—

  Whatever it is. Stripped naked.

  Shivering. Human. Mortal.

  On a thread finer than starlight.

  By a power of a feeling,

  Hangs, impossible, unthinkable,

  Between the earth and the sky.

  I, it says. I. I.

  And how it boasts,

  That everything that is to be known

  About the wind

  Is being revealed to it as it hangs.

  •

  It goes without saying . . .

  What does? No one knows.

  Goes mysterious, ah funereal,

  Goes for the hell of it.

  If it has an opinion,

  It keeps it to itself.

  If it brings tidings,

  It plays dumb, plays dead.

  No use trying to pin it down.

  It’s elusive, of a retiring habit,

  In a hurry of course, scurrying—

  A blink of an eye and it’s gone.

  All that’s known about it,

  Is that it goes goes

  Without saying.

  Brooms

  for Tomaz, Susan, and George

  1

  Only brooms

  Know the devil

  Still exists,

  That the snow grows whiter

  After a crow has flown over it,

  That a dark dusty corner

  Is the place of dreamers and children,

  That a broom is also a tree

  In the orchard of the poor,

  That a hanging roach there

  Is a mute dove.

  2

  Brooms appear in dream books

  As omens of approaching death.

  This is their secret life.

  In public, they act like flat-chested old maids

  Preaching temperance.

  They are sworn enemies of lyric poetry.

  In prison they accompany the jailer,

  Enter cells to hear confessions.

  Their short end comes down

  When you least expect it.

  Left alone behind a door

  Of a condemned tenement,

  They mutter to no one in particular,

  Words like virgin wind moon-eclipse,

  And that most sacred of all names:

  Hieronymus Bosch.

  3

  In this and in no other manner

  Was the first ancestral broom made:

  Namely, they plucked all the arrows

  From the bent back of Saint Sebastian.

  They tied them with the rope

  On which Judas hung himself.

  Stuck in the stilt

  On which Copernicus

  Touched the morning star . . .

  Then the broom was ready

  To leave the monastery.

  The dust welcomed it—

  The old pornographer

  Immediately wanted to

  Peek under its skirt.

  4

  The secret teaching of brooms

  Excludes optimism, the consolation

  Of laziness, the astonishing wonders

  Of a glass of aged moonshine.

  It says: the bones end up under the table.

  Bread crumbs have a mind of their own.

  The milk is you-know-who’s semen.

  The mice have the last squeal.

  As for the famous business

  Of levitation, I suggest remembering:

  There is only one God

  And his prophet is Muhammed.

  5

  And then finally there’s your grandmother

  Sweeping the dust of the nineteenth century

  Into the twentieth, and your grandfather plucking

  A straw out of the broom to pick his teeth.

  Long winter nights.

  Dawns a thousand years deep.

  Kitchen windows like heads

  Bandaged for toothache.

  The broom beyond them sweeping,

  Tucking the lucent grains of dust

  Into neat pyramids,

  That have tombs in them,

  Already sacked by robbers,

  Once, long ago.

  Watermelons

  Green Buddhas

  On the fruit stand.

  We eat the smile

  And spit out the teeth.

  The Place

  They were talking about the war,

  The table still uncleared in front of them.

  Across the way, the first window

  Of the evening was already lit.

  He sat, hunched over, quiet,

  The old fear coming over him . . .

  It grew darker. She got up to take the plate—

  Now harshly white—to the kitchen.

  Outside in the fields, in the woods,

  A bird spoke in proverbs,

  A Pope went out to meet Attila,

  The ditch was ready for the firing squad.

  Breasts

  I love breasts, hard

  Full breasts, guarded

  By a button.

  They come in the night.

  The bestiaries of the ancients

  Which include the unicorn

  Have kept them out.

  Pearly, like the east

  An hour before sunrise,

  Two ovens of the only

  Philosopher’s stone

  Worth bothering about.

  They bring on their nipples

  Beads of inaudible sighs,

  Vowels of delicious clarity

  For the little red schoolhouse of our mouths.

  Elsewhere, solitude

  Makes another gloomy entry

  In its ledger, misery

  Borrows another cup of rice.

  They draw nearer: Animal

  Presence. In the barn

  The milk shivers in the pail.

  I like to come up to them

  From underneath, like a kid

  Who climbs on a chair

  To reach a jar of forbidden jam.

  Gently, with my lips,

  Loosen the button.

  Have them slip into my hands

  Like two freshly poured beer mugs.

  I spit on fools who fail to include

  Breasts in their metaphysics,

  Stargazers who have not enumerated them

  Among the moons of the earth . . .

  They give each finger

  Its true shape, its joy:

  Virgin soap, foam

  On which our hands are cleansed.

  And how the tongue honors

  These two sour buns,

  For the tongue is a feather

  Dipped in egg yolk.

  I insist that a girl

  Stripped to the waist

  Is the first and last miracle,

  That the old janitor on his deathbed

  Who demands to see the breasts of his wife

  For one last time

  Is the greatest poet who ever lived.

  O my sweet yes, my sweet no,

  Look, everyone is asleep on the earth.

  Now, in the hush,

  Drawing the waist

  Of the one I love to mine,

  I will tip each breast

  Like a dark heavy grape

  Into the hive

  Of my drowsy mouth.

  Charles Simic

  Charles Simic is a sentence.

  A sentence has a beginning and an end.

&nbs
p; Is he a simple or compound sentence?

  It depends on the weather,

  It depends on the stars above.

  What is the subject of the sentence?

  The subject is your beloved Charles Simic.

  How many verbs are there in the sentence?

  Eating, sleeping, and fucking are some of its verbs.

  What is the object of the sentence?

  The object, my little ones,

  Is not yet in sight.

 

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