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New and Selected Poems

Page 4

by Charles Simic


  Upon entering.

  And a longing,

  Incredible longing

  To eavesdrop

  On the conversation

  Of cooks.

  The Lesson

  It occurs to me now

  that all these years

  I have been

  the idiot pupil

  of a practical joker.

  Diligently

  and with foolish reverence

  I wrote down

  what I took to be

  his wise pronouncements

  concerning

  my life on earth.

  Like a parrot

  I rattled off the dates

  of wars and revolutions.

  I rejoiced

  at the death of my tormentors.

  I even became convinced

  that their number

  was diminishing.

  It seemed to me

  that gradually

  my teacher was revealing to me

  a pattern,

  that what I was being told

  was an intricate plot

  of a picaresque novel

  in installments,

  the last pages of which

  would be given over

  entirely

  to lyrical evocations

  of nature.

  Unfortunately,

  with time,

  I began to detect in myself

  an inability

  to forget even

  the most trivial detail.

  I lingered more and more

  over the beginnings:

  The haircut of a soldier

  who was urinating

  against our fence;

  shadows of trees on the ceiling,

  the day

  my mother and I

  had nothing to eat . . .

  Somehow,

  I couldn’t get past

  that prison train

  that kept waking me up

  every night.

  I couldn’t get that whistle

  that rumble

  out of my head . . .

  In this classroom

  austerely furnished

  by my insomnia,

  at the desk consisting

  of my two knees,

  for the first time

  in this long and terrifying

  apprenticeship,

  I burst out laughing.

  Forgive me, all of you!

  At the memory of my uncle

  charging a barricade

  with a homemade bomb,

  I burst out laughing.

  A Landscape with Crutches

  So many crutches. Now even the daylight

  Needs one, even the smoke

  As it goes up. And the shacks—

  One per customer—they move off

  In a single file with difficulty,

  I said, with a hell of an effort . . .

  And the trees behind them about to stumble,

  And the ants on their toy crutches,

  And the wind on its ghost crutch.

  I can’t get any peace around here:

  The bread on its artificial legs,

  A headless doll in a wheelchair,

  And my mother, mind you, using

  Two knives for crutches as she squats to pee.

  Help Wanted

  They ask for a knife

  I come running

  They need a lamb

  I introduce myself as the lamb

  A thousand sincere apologies

  It seems they require some rat poison

  They require a shepherd

  For their flock of black widows

  Luckily I’ve brought my bloody

  Letters of recommendation

  I’ve brought my death certificate

  Signed and notarized

  But they’ve changed their minds again

  Now they want a songbird, a bit of springtime

  They want a woman

  To soap and kiss their balls

  It’s one of my many talents

  (I assure them)

  Chirping and whistling like an aviary

  Spreading the cheeks of my ass

  Animal Acts

  A bear who eats with a silver spoon.

  Two apes adept at grave-digging.

  Rats who do calculus.

  A police dog who copulates with a woman,

  Who takes undertaker’s measurements.

  A bedbug who suffers, who has doubts

  About his existence. The miraculous

  Laughing dove. A thousand-year-old turtle

  Playing billiards. A chicken who

  Cuts his own throat, who bleeds.

  The trainer with his sugar cubes,

  With his chair and whip. The evenings

  When they all huddle in a cage,

  Smoking cheap cigars, lazily

  Marking the cards in the new deck.

  Charon’s Cosmology

  With only his dim lantern

  To tell him where he is

  And every time a mountain

  Of fresh corpses to load up

  Take them to the other side

  Where there are plenty more

  I’d say by now he must be confused

  As to which side is which

  I’d say it doesn’t matter

  No one complains he’s got

  Their pockets to go through

  In one a crust of bread in another a sausage

  Once in a long while a mirror

  Or a book which he throws

  Overboard into the dark river

  Swift and cold and deep

  The Ballad of the Wheel

  so that’s what it’s like to be a wheel

  so that’s what it’s like to be tied to one of its spokes

  while the rim screeches while the axle grinds

  so that’s what it’s like to have the earth and heaven confused

  to speak of the stars on the road

  of stones churning in the icy sky

  to suffer as the wheel suffers

  to bear its unimaginable weight

  if only it were a honing wheel

  I would have its sparks to see by

  if only it were a millstone

  I would have bread to keep my mouth busy

  if only it were a roulette wheel

  my left eye would watch its right dance in it

  so that’s what it’s like

  to be chained to the wounded rib of a wheel

  to move as the hearse moves

  to move as the lumber truck moves

  down the mountains at night

  •

  what do you think my love

  while the wheel turns

  I think of the horse out in front

  how the snowflakes are caught in his mane

  how he shakes his beautiful blindfolded head

  I think how in the springtime

  two birds are pulling us along as they fly

  how one bird is a crow

  and the other a swallow

  I think how in the summertime

  there’s no one out there

  except the clouds in the blue sky

  except the dusk in the blue sky

  I think how in autumn

  there’s a man harnessed out there

  a bearded man with the bit stuck in his mouth

  a hunchback with a blanket over his shoulders

  hauling the wheel

  heavy as the earth

  •

  don’t you hear I say don’t you hear

  the wheel talks as it turns

  I have the impression that it’s hugging me closer

  that it has maternal instincts

  that it’s telling me a bedtime story

  that it knows the way home

  that I grit my teeth just like my father

  I have the impression

  that it whispers to me

  how a
ll I have to do

  to stop its turning

  is to hold my breath

  A Wall

  That’s the only image

  That turns up.

  A wall all by itself,

  Poorly lit, beckoning,

  But no sense of the room,

  Not even a hint

  Of why it is I remember

  So little and so clearly:

  The fly I was watching,

  The details of its wings

  Glowing like turquoise.

  Its feet, to my amusement

  Following a minute crack—

  An eternity

  Around that simple event.

  And nothing else; and nowhere

  To go back to;

  And no one else

  As far as I know to verify.

  The Terms

  A child crying in the night

  Across the street

  In one of the many dark windows.

  That, too, to get used to,

  Make part of your life.

  Like this book of astronomy

  Which you open with equal apprehension

  By the light of table lamp,

  And your birdlike shadow on the wall.

  A sleepless witness at the base

  Of this expanding immensity,

  Simultaneous in this moment

  With all of its empty spaces,

  Listening to a child crying in the night

  With a hope,

  It will go on crying a little longer.

  Eyes Fastened with Pins

  How much death works,

  No one knows what a long

  Day he puts in. The little

  Wife always alone

  Ironing death’s laundry.

  The beautiful daughters

  Setting death’s supper table.

  The neighbors playing

  Pinochle in the backyard

  Or just sitting on the steps

  Drinking beer. Death,

  Meanwhile, in a strange

  Part of town looking for

  Someone with a bad cough,

  But the address is somehow wrong,

  Even death can’t figure it out

  Among all the locked doors . . .

  And the rain beginning to fall.

  Long windy night ahead.

  Death with not even a newspaper

  To cover his head, not even

  A dime to call the one pining away,

  Undressing slowly, sleepily,

  And stretching naked

  On death’s side of the bed.

  The Prisoner

  He is thinking of us.

  These leaves, their lazy rustle

  That made us sleepy after lunch

  So we had to lie down.

  He considers my hand on her breast,

  Her closed eyelids, her moist lips

  Against my forehead, and the shadows of trees

  Hovering on the ceiling.

  It’s been so long. He has trouble

  Deciding what else is there.

  And all along the suspicion

  That we do not exist.

  Empire of Dreams

  On the first page of my dreambook

  It’s always evening

  In an occupied country.

  Hour before the curfew.

  A small provincial city.

  The houses all dark.

  The storefronts gutted.

  I am on a street corner

  Where I shouldn’t be.

  Alone and coatless

  I have gone out to look

  For a black dog who answers to my whistle.

  I have a kind of Halloween mask

  Which I am afraid to put on.

  Prodigy

  I grew up bent over

  a chessboard.

  I loved the word endgame.

  All my cousins looked worried.

  It was a small house

  near a Roman graveyard.

  Planes and tanks

  shook its windowpanes.

  A retired professor of astronomy

  taught me how to play.

  That must have been in 1944 .

  In the set we were using,

  the paint had almost chipped off

  the black pieces.

  The white King was missing

  and had to be substituted for.

  I’m told but do not believe

  that that summer I witnessed

  men hung from telephone poles.

  I remember my mother

  blindfolding me a lot.

  She had a way of tucking my head

  suddenly under her overcoat.

  In chess, too, the professor told me,

  the masters play blindfolded,

  the great ones on several boards

  at the same time.

  Baby Pictures of Famous Dictators

  The epoch of a streetcar drawn by horses,

  The organ-grinder and his monkey.

  Women with parasols. Little kids in rowboats

  Photographed against a cardboard backdrop depicting an idyllic sunset

  At the fairgrounds where they all went to see

  The two-headed calf, the bearded

  Fat lady who dances the dance of seven veils.

  And the great famine raging through India . . .

  Fortunetelling white rat pulling a card out of a shoebox

  While Edison worries over the lightbulb,

  And the first model of the sewing machine

  Is delivered in a pushcart

  To a modest white-fenced home in the suburbs,

  Where there are always a couple of infants

  Posing for the camera in their sailors’ suits,

  Out there in the garden overgrown with shrubs.

  Lovable little mugs smiling faintly toward

  The new century. Innocent. Why not?

  All of them like ragdolls of the period

  With those chubby porcelain heads

  That shut their long eyelashes as you lay them down.

  In a kind of perpetual summer twilight . . .

  One can even make out the shadow of the tripod and the black hood

  That must have been quivering in the breeze.

  One assumes that they all stayed up late squinting at the stars,

  And were carried off to bed by their mothers and big sisters.

  While the dogs remained behind:

  Pedigreed bitches pregnant with bloodhounds.

  Shirt

  To get into it

  As it lies

  Crumpled on the floor

  Without disturbing a single crease

  Respectful

  Of the way I threw it down

  Last night

  The way it happened to land

  Almost managing

  The impossible contortions

  Doubling back now

  Through a knotted sleeve

  Begotten of the Spleen

  The Virgin Mother walked barefoot

  Among the land mines.

  She carried an old man in her arms

  Like a howling babe.

  The earth was an old people’s home.

  Judas was the night nurse,

  Emptying bedpans into the river Jordan,

  Tying people on a dog chain.

  The old man had two stumps for legs.

  St. Peter came pushing a cart

  Loaded with flying carpets.

  They were not flying carpets.

  They were piles of bloody diapers.

  The Magi stood around

  Cleaning their nails with bayonets.

  The old man gave little Mary Magdalene

  A broken piece of a mirror.

  She hid in the church outhouse.

  When she got thirsty she licked

  The steam off the glass.

  That leaves Joseph. Poor Joseph,

  Standing naked in the snow.

  He only
had a rat

  To load his suitcases on.

  The rat wouldn’t run into its hole.

  Even when the searchlights came on

  Up in the guard towers

  And caught them standing there.

  Toy Factory

  My mother works here,

  And so does my father.

  It’s the night shift.

  At the assembly line,

  They wind toys up

  To inspect their springs.

  The seven toy members

  Of the firing squad

  Point their rifles,

  And lower them quickly.

  The one being shot at

  Falls and gets up,

  Falls and gets up.

  His blindfold is just painted on.

  The toy gravediggers

  Don’t work so well.

  Their spades are heavy,

  Their spades are much too heavy.

  Perhaps that’s how

 

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