New and Selected Poems

by Charles Simic

  To pare, snip . . .

  After which it sits still

  For the stream to explain why it shivers

  So.

  Resuming, farther on,

  Intermittently,

  By the barn

  Where the first stars are—

  In quotation marks,

  As it were—O phantom

  Bird!

  Dreaming of my own puzzles

  And mazes.

  Peaceful Trees

  in memory of M. N.

  All shivers,

  Dear friends.

  Is it for me

  You keep still?

  Not a rustle

  To remind me—

  Quietly, the healing

  Spreads—

  A deep shade

  Over each face.

  •

  So many leaves,

  And not one

  Lately stirring.

  So many already

  Tongue-shaped,

  Tip-of-the-tongue-shaped.

  Oh the sweet speech of trees

  In the evening breeze

  Of some other summer.

  Speech like sudden

  Rustle of raindrops

  Out of the high, pitch-blue

  Heavens.

  Lofty ones,

  Do you shudder

  When the chain saw

  Cuts one of you?

  Would it soothe,

  If for all you voiceless,

  To high heavens

  The one with the rope round his neck

  Were to plead?

  •

  Forgive me,

  For the conjecture

  I’m prone to—

  Restless as I am

  Before you windless,

  Whispering

  To the Master Whisperers

  Of their own

  Early-evening silences.

  My Beloved

  after D. Khrams

  In the fine print of her face

  Her eyes are two loopholes.

  No, let me start again.

  Her eyes are flies in milk,

  Her eyes are baby Draculas.

  To hell with her eyes.

  Let me tell you about her mouth.

  Her mouth’s the red cottage

  Where the wolf ate grandma.

  Ah, forget about her mouth,

  Let me talk about her breasts.

  I get a peek at them now and then

  And even that’s more than enough

  To make me lose my head,

  So I better tell you about her legs.

  When she crosses them on the sofa

  It’s like the jailer unwrapping a parcel

  And in that parcel is a Christmas cake

  And in that cake a sweet little file

  That gasps her name as it files my chains.

  Hurricane Season

  Just as the world was ending

  We fell in love,

  Immoderately. I had a pair of

  Blue pinstripe trousers

  Impeccably pressed

  Against misfortune;

  You had a pair of silver,

  Spiked-heeled shoes,

  And a peekaboo blouse.

  We looked swank kissing

  While reflected in a pawnshop window:

  Banjos and fiddles around us,

  Even a gleaming tuba. I said,

  Two phosphorescent minute hands

  Against the Unmeasurables,

  Geniuses when it came to

  Undressing each other

  By slow tantalizing degrees . . .

  That happened in a crepuscular hotel

  That had seen better days,

  Across from some sort of august state institution,

  Rain-blurred

  With its couple of fake

  Egyptian stone lions.

  Note

  A rat came on stage

  During the performance

  Of the school Christmas play.

  Mary let out a scream

  And dropped the infant

  On Joseph’s foot.

  The three Magi remained

  Frozen

  In their colorful robes.

  You could hear a pin drop

  As the rat surveyed the manger

  Momentarily

  Before proceeding to the wings

  Where someone hit him,

  In earnest,

  Once, and then twice more,

  With a heavy object.

  History

  On a gray evening

  Of a gray century,

  I ate an apple

  While no one was looking.

  A small, sour apple

  The color of wood fire

  Which I first wiped

  On my sleeve.

  Then I stretched my legs

  As far as they’d go,

  Said to myself

  Why not close my eyes now

  Before the late

  World News and Weather.

  Strictly Bucolic

  for Mark and Jules

  Are these mellifluous sheep,

  And these the meadows made twice melliferous by their

  bleating?

  Is that the famous mechanical windup shepherd

  Who comes with instructions and service manual?

  This must be the regulation white fleece

  Bleached and starched to perfection,

  And we could be posing for our first communion pictures,

  Except for the nasty horns.

  I am beginning to think this might be

  The Angelic Breeders Association’s

  Millennial Company Picnic (all expenses paid)

  With a few large black dogs as special guests.

  These dogs serve as ushers and usherettes.

  They’re always studying the rules,

  The exigencies of proper deportment

  When they’re not reading Theocritus,

  Or wagging their tails at the approach of

  Theodora. Or is it Theodosius? Or even Theodoric?

  They’re theomorfic, of course. They theologize.

  Theogony is their favorite. They also love theomachy.

  Now they hand out the blue ribbons.

  Ah, there’s one for everyone!

  Plus the cauldrons of stinking cabbage and boiled turnips

  Which don’t figure in this idyll.

  Crows

  Just so that each stark,

  Spiked twig,

  May be even more fierce

  With significance,

  There are these birds

  As further harbingers

  Of the coming wintry reduction

  To sign and enigma:

  The impatient way

  In which they shook snow

  Off their wings,

  And then remained, inexplicably

  Thus, wings half-open,

  Making two large algebraic X’s

  As if for emphasis,

  Or in the mockery of . . .

  February

  The one who lights the wood stove

  Gets up in the dark.

  How cold the iron is to the hand

  Groping to open the flue,

  The hand that will draw back

  At the roar of the wind outside.

  The wood that no longer smells of the woods;

  The wood that smells of rats and mice—

  And the matches that are always so loud

  In the glacial stillness.

  By its flare you’ll see her squat;

  Gaunt, wide-eyed;

  Her lips saying the stark headlines

  Going up in flames.

  Punch Minus Judy

  Where the elevated subway slows down,

  A row of broken windows,

  Only a single one still intact

  Open and thickly curtained.

  That’s where I once saw a thin arm

  Slip out between the sli
ts,

  The hand open to feel for drops of rain,

  Or to give us a papal blessing.

  Another time, there were two—

  Chopped off at the elbows

  Raising a small, naked baby

  For a breath of evening air

  Above the sweltering street

  With a gang of men partying

  Out of brown paper bags,

  One limping off, seemingly, in a huff.

  Austerities

  From the heel

  Of a half-loaf

  Of black bread,

  They made a child’s head.

  Child, they said,

  We’ve nothing for eyes,

  Nothing to spare for ears

  And nose.

  Just a knife

  To make a slit

  Where your mouth

  Ought to be.

  You can grin,

  You can eat,

  Spit the crumbs

  Into our faces.

  Eastern European Cooking

  While Marquis de Sade had himself buggered—

  Oh just around the time the Turks

  Were roasting my ancestors on spits,

  Goethe wrote The Sorrows of Young Werther.

  It was chilly, raw, down-in-the-mouth

  We were slurping bean soup thick with smoked sausage,

  On Second Avenue, where years before I saw an old horse

  Pull a wagon piled up high with flophouse mattresses.

  Anyway, as I was telling my uncle Boris,

  With my mouth full of pig’s feet and wine:

  “While they were holding hands and sighing under parasols,

  We were being hung by our tongues.”

  “I make no distinction between scum,”

  He said, and he meant everybody,

  Us and them: A breed of murderers’ helpers,

  Evil-smelling torturers’ apprentices.

  Which called for another bottle of Hungarian wine,

  And some dumplings stuffed with prunes,

  Which we devoured in silence

  While the Turks went on beating their cymbals and drums.

  Luckily we had this Transylvanian waiter,

  A defrocked priest, ex–dancing school instructor,

  Regarding whose excellence we were in complete agreement

  Since he didn’t forget the toothpicks with our bill.

  My Weariness of Epic Proportions

  I like it when

  Achilles

  Gets killed

  And even his buddy Patroclus—

  And that hothead Hector—

  And the whole Greek and Trojan

  Jeunesse dorée

  Are more or less

  Expertly slaughtered

  So there’s finally

  Peace and quiet

  (The gods having momentarily

  Shut up)

  One can hear

  A bird sing

  And a daughter ask her mother

  Whether she can go to the well

  And of course she can

  By that lovely little path

  That winds through

  The olive orchard

  Madonnas Touched Up with Goatees

  Most ancient Metaphysics (poor Metaphysics!),

  All decked out in imitation jewelry.

  We went for a stroll, arm in arm, smooching in public

  Despite the difference in ages.

  It’s still the nineteenth century, she whispered.

  We were in a knife-fighting neighborhood

  Among some rundown relics of the Industrial Revolution.

  Just a little farther, she assured me,

  In the back of a certain candy store only she knew about,

  The customers were engrossed in the Phenomenology of

  the Spirit.

  It’s long past midnight, my dove, my angel!

  We’d better be careful, I thought.

  There were young hoods on street corners

  With crosses and iron studs on their leather jackets.

  They all looked like they’d read Darwin and that

  madman Pavlov,

  And were about to ask us for a light.

  Midpoint

  No sooner had I left A.

  Than I started doubting its existence:

  Its streets and noisy crowds;

  Its famous all-night cafés and prisons.

  It was dinnertime. The bakeries were closing:

  Their shelves empty and white with flour.

  The grocers were lowering their iron grilles.

  A lovely young woman was buying the last casaba melon.

  Even the back alley where I was born

  Blurs, dims . . . O rooftops!

  Armadas of bedsheets and shirts

  In the blustery, crimson dusk . . .

  •

  B. at which I am destined

  To arrive by and by

  Doesn’t exist now. Hurriedly

  They’re building it for my arrival,

  And on that day it will be ready:

  Its streets and noisy crowds . . .

  Even the schoolhouse where I first

  Forged my father’s signature . . .

  Knowing that on the day

  Of my departure

  It will vanish forever

  Just as A. did.

  II

  from UNENDING BLUES

  December

  It snows

  and still the derelicts

  go

  carrying sandwich boards—

  one proclaiming

  the end of the world

  the other

  the rates of a local barbershop

  Toward Nightfall

  for Don and Jane

  The weight of tragic events

  On everyone’s back,

  Just as tragedy

  In the proper Greek sense

  Was thought impossible

  To compose in our day.

  There were scaffolds,

  Makeshift stages,

  Puny figures on them,

  Like small indistinct animals

  Caught in the headlights

  Crossing the road way ahead,

  In the gray twilight

  That went on hesitating

  On the verge of a huge

  Starless autumn night.

  One could’ve been in

  The back of an open truck

  Hunkering because of

  The speed and chill.

  One could’ve been walking

  With a sidelong glance

  At the many troubling shapes

  The bare trees made—

  Like those about to shriek,

  But finding themselves unable

  To utter a word now.

  One could’ve been in

  One of these dying mill towns

  Inside a small dim grocery

  When the news broke.

  One would’ve drawn near the radio

  With the one many months pregnant

  Who serves there at that hour.

  Was there a smell of

  Spilled blood in the air,

  Or was it that other,

  Much finer scent—of fear,

  The fear of approaching death

  One met on the empty street?

  Monsters on movie posters, too,

  Prominently displayed.

  Then, six factory girls,

  Arm in arm, laughing

  As if they’ve been drinking.

  At the very least, one

  Could’ve been one of them.

  The one with a mouth

  Painted bright red,

  Who feels out of sorts,

  For no reason, very pale,

  And so, excusing herself,

  Vanishes where it says

  Rooms for Rent,

  And immediately goes to bed,

  Fully dressed, only

  To lie with eyes open,


  Trembling, despite the covers.

  It’s just a bad chill,

  She keeps telling herself

  Not having seen the papers

  Which the landlord has the dog

  Bring from the front porch.

  The old man never learned

  To read well, and so

  Reads on in that half-whisper,

  And in that half-light