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New and Selected Poems

Page 19

by Charles Simic


  Eternities

  Discreet reader of discreet lives.

  Chairs no one ever sits in.

  Motes of dust, their dancing days done.

  Schools of yellow fish

  On the peeling wallpaper

  Keeping their eyes on you.

  It’s late for today, late.

  A small crucifix over the bed

  Watches over a stopped clock.

  •

  Sewing room, linty daylight

  Through a small window.

  You will never be in my shoes, Eternity.

  I come with an expiration date.

  My scissors cut black cloth.

  I stick silver pins into a tailor’s dummy,

  Muttering some man’s name

  While aiming at its heart.

  •

  Raleigh played cards with his executioners.

  I sit over a dead mouse in the kitchen.

  Hot night, the windows open,

  The air rich with the scents of lilacs

  And banked fires of backyard grills.

  My lovely neighbor must be sleeping naked,

  Or lighting a match to see what time it is.

  •

  The torment of branches in the wind.

  Is the sea hearing their confession?

  The little white clouds must think so.

  They are rushing over to hear.

  The ship on the way to paradise

  Seems stuck on the horizon,

  Pinned by one golden pin of sunlight.

  Only the great rocks act as if nothing’s the matter.

  •

  In a city where so much is hidden:

  The crimes, the riches, the beautiful women,

  You and I were lost for hours.

  We went in to ask a butcher for directions.

  He sat playing the accordion.

  The lambs had their eyes closed in bliss,

  But not the knives, his evil little helpers.

  Come right in, folks, he said.

  •

  Conscience, that awful power,

  With its vast network of spies,

  Secret arrests at night,

  Dreaded prisons and reform schools,

  Beatings and forced confessions,

  Wee-hour crucifixions.

  A small, dead bird in my hand

  Is all the evidence they had.

  •

  The sprawling meadow bordered by a stream,

  Naked girl on horseback.

  Yes, I do remember that.

  Sunlight on the outhouse wall,

  One little tree in the yard afraid of darkness,

  The voice of the hermit thrush.

  •

  Thoughts frightened of the light,

  Frightened of each other.

  They listen to a clock ticking.

  Like flock of sheep led to slaughter,

  The seconds keep a good pace,

  Stick together, don’t look back,

  All worried, as they go,

  What their shepherd may be thinking.

  •

  A sough of wind in the open window

  Making the leaves sigh.

  “I come to you like one

  Who is dying of love,”

  God said to Christine Ebner

  On this dull, sultry night.

  “I come to you with the desire

  Of bridegroom for his bride.”

  •

  Soul’s jukebox

  Playing golden oldies

  In the sky

  Strewn with stars.

  When I ask God

  What size coin it takes

  I’m greeted

  With stunned silence.

  Eternity’s Orphans

  One night you and I were walking.

  The moon was so bright

  We could see the path under the trees.

  Then the clouds came and hid it

  So we had to grope our way

  Till we felt the sand under our bare feet,

  And heard the pounding waves.

  Do you remember telling me,

  “Everything outside this moment is a lie”?

  We were undressing in the dark

  Right at the water’s edge

  When I slipped the watch off my wrist

  And without being seen or saying

  Anything in reply, I threw it into the sea.

  XII

  from MASTER OF DISGUISES

  Master of Disguises

  Surely, he walks among us unrecognized:

  Some barber, store clerk, delivery man,

  Pharmacist, hairdresser, bodybuilder,

  Exotic dancer, gem cutter, dog walker,

  The blind beggar singing, O Lord, remember me,

  Some window decorator starting a fake fire

  In a fake fireplace while mother and father watch

  From the couch with their frozen smiles

  As the street empties and the time comes

  For the undertaker and the last waiter to head home.

  O homeless old man, standing in a doorway

  With your face half hidden,

  I wouldn’t even rule out the black cat crossing the street,

  The bare lightbulb swinging on a wire

  In a subway tunnel as the train comes to a stop.

  Nineteen Thirty-eight

  That was the year the Nazis marched into Vienna,

  Superman made his debut in Action Comics,

  Stalin was killing off his fellow revolutionaries,

  The first Dairy Queen opened in Kankakee, Ill.,

  As I lay in my crib peeing in my diapers.

  “You must’ve been a beautiful baby,” Bing Crosby sang.

  A pilot the newspapers called Wrong Way Corrigan

  Took off from New York heading for California

  And landed instead in Ireland, as I watched my mother

  Take a breast out of her blue robe and come closer.

  There was a hurricane that September causing a movie theater

  At Westhampton Beach to be lifted out to sea.

  People worried the world was about to end.

  A fish believed to have been extinct for seventy million years

  Came up in a fishing net off the coast of South Africa.

  I lay in my crib as the days got shorter and colder,

  And the first heavy snow fell in the night

  Making everything very quiet in my room.

  I thought I heard myself cry for a long, long time.

  Preachers Warn

  This peaceful world of ours is ready for destruction—

  And still the sun shines, the sparrows come

  Each morning to the bakery for crumbs.

  Next door, two men deliver a bed for a pair of newlyweds

  And stop to admire a bicycle chained to a parking meter.

  Its owner is making lunch for his ailing grandmother.

  He heats the soup and serves it to her in a bowl.

  The windows are open, there’s a warm breeze.

  The young trees on our street are delirious to have leaves.

  Italian opera is on the radio, the volume too high.

  Brevi e tristi giorni visse, a baritone sings.

  Everyone up and down our block can hear him.

  Something about the days that remain for us to enjoy

  Being few and sad. Not today, Maestro Verdi!

  At the hairdresser’s a girl leaps out of a chair,

  Her blond hair bouncing off her bare shoulders

  As she runs out the door in her high heels.

  “I must be off,” says the handsome boy to his grandmother.

  His bicycle is where he left it.

  He rides it casually through the heavy traffic

  His white shirttails fluttering behind him

  Long after everyone else has come to a sudden stop.

  Old Man

  Backed myself into a dark corner one day,
/>
  Found a boy there

  Forgotten by teachers and classmates,

  His shoulders slumped,

  The hair on his head already gray.

  Friend, I said.

  While you stood here staring at the wall,

  They shot a president,

  Some guy walked on the moon,

  Dolly, the girl we all loved,

  Took too many sleeping pills and died

  In a hotel room in Santa Monica.

  Now and then I thought of you,

  Listening to the squeak of the chalk

  On the blackboard,

  The sighs and whispers

  Of unknown children

  Bent over their lessons,

  The mice running in the night.

  Visions of unspeakable loveliness

  Must’ve come to you in your misery:

  Cloudless skies on long June evenings,

  Trees full of cherries in our orchard,

  To make you ache and want to be with me,

  Driving a cab in New York City.

  Nancy Jane

  Grandma laughing on her deathbed.

  Eternity, the quiet one, listening in.

  Like moths around an oil lamp we were.

  Like rag dolls tucked away in the attic.

  In walked a cat with a mouthful of feathers.

  (How about that?)

  A dark little country store full of gravediggers’ children

  buying candy.

  (That’s how we looked that night.)

  The young man pumping gas spoke of his friends: the clouds.

  It was such a sad story, it made everyone laugh.

  A bird called out of a tree, but received no answer.

  The beauty of that last moment

  Like a red sail on the bay at sunset,

  Or like a wheel breaking off a car

  And roaming the world on its own.

  Carrying On Like a Crow

  Are you authorized to speak

  For these trees without leaves?

  Are you able to explain

  What the wind intends to do

  With a man’s shirt and a woman’s nightgown

  Left on the laundry line?

  What do you know about dark clouds?

  Ponds full of fallen leaves?

  Old-model cars rusting in a driveway?

  Who gave you the permission

  To look at the beer can in a ditch?

  The white cross by the side of the road?

  The swing set in the widow’s yard?

  Ask yourself, if words are enough,

  Or if you’d be better off

  Flapping your wings from tree to tree

  And carrying on like a crow.

  Driving Home

  Minister of our coming doom, preaching

  On the car radio, how right

  Your hell and damnation sound to me

  As I travel these small, bleak roads

  Thinking of the mailman’s son

  The army sent back in a sealed coffin.

  His house is around the next turn.

  A forlorn mutt sits in the yard

  Waiting for someone to come home.

  I can see the TV is on in the living room,

  Canned laughter in the empty house

  Like the sound of beer cans tied to a hearse.

  Sightseeing in the Capital

  These grand old buildings

  With their spacious conference rooms,

  Leather-padded doors,

  Where they weigh life and death

  Without a moment of fear

  Of ever being held accountable,

  And then withdraw to dine in style

  And drink to each other’s health

  In private clubs and country estates,

  While we linger on the sidewalk

  Admiring the rows of windows

  The evening sun has struck blind.

  Daughters of Memory

  There were three of them, always three,

  Sunbathing side by side on the beach,

  The sound of waves and children’s voices so soothing

  It was hard to stay awake.

  When I woke, the sun was setting.

  The three friends knelt in a circle

  Taking turns to peek into a small mirror

  And comb their hair with the same comb.

  Months later, I happened to see two of them

  Running in the rain after school,

  Ducking into a doorway with a pack of cigarettes

  And a glance at me in my new uniform.

  In the end, there was just one girl left,

  Tall and beautiful,

  Making late rounds in a hospital ward,

  Past a row of beds, one of which was mine.

  In That Big House

  When she still knew how to make shadows speak

  By sitting with them a long time,

  They talked about her handsome father,

  His long absence, and how the quiet

  Would fill the house on snowy evenings.

  “Tell us, child, are you afraid?” they’d ask,

  While the girl listened for steps in the hallway,

  The long, dim one with a full-length mirror

  That’s been going blind like her grandmother

  Who could no longer find or thread a needle

  As she sat in the parlor remembering some actors

  Her son brought to dinner one night,

  The one young woman who wandered off by herself

  And was found later, after a long search,

  Floating naked in the black water of the pond.

  Puppet Maker

  In his fear of solitude, he made us.

  Fearing eternity, he gave us time.

  I hear his white cane thumping

  Up and down the hall.

  I expect neighbors to complain, but no.

  The little girl who sobbed

  When her daddy crawled into her bed

  Is quiet now.

  It’s quarter to two.

  On this street of darkened pawnshops,

  Welfare hotels and tenements,

  One or two ragged puppets are awake.

  Summer Storm

  I’m going over to see what those weeds

  By the stone wall are fretting about.

  Perhaps they don’t care for the way

  The shadows creep across the lawn

  In the silence of the afternoon.

  The sky keeps being blue,

  Though we hear no birds,

  See no butterflies among the flowers,

  No ants running over our feet.

  As for the trees in our yard,

  They bend their branches ever so slightly

  In deference to something

  About to make its entrance

  Of which we know nothing,

  Spellbound as we are by the deepening quiet.

  The Melon

  There was a melon fresh from the garden

  So ripe the knife slurped

  As it cut it into six slices.

  The children were going back to school.

  Their mother, passing out paper plates,

  Would not live to see the leaves fall.

  I remember a hornet, too, that flew in

  Through the open window

  Mad to taste the sweet fruit

  While we ducked and screamed,

  Covered our heads and faces,

  And sat laughing after it was gone.

  The Lovers

  In the woods one fair Sunday,

  When we were children,

  We came upon a couple lying on the ground.

  Hand in hand, ourselves afraid

  Of losing our way, we saw

  What we first thought was a patch of snow,

  The two clutching each other naked

  On the bare ground, the wind

  Swaying the branches over them

  As we stole by, neve
r to find out

  Who they were, never to mention it afterwards

  To each other, or to anyone else.

  The Empress

  My beloved, you who spend your nights

  Torturing me

  By holding up one mirror after another

  To me in the dark,

  If there’s anything I know to say or do today,

  I merit no praise for it,

  But owe it to the subtlety of your torments,

  And your perseverance in keeping me awake.

  All the same, who gave you the right

  To judge me in my wretchedness?

  What soul white as snow

  Compiled this endless list of misdeeds

  You read to me every night?

  The airs you put on when I tell you to stop

  Would make one believe

  You were once a bedmate of a Chinese emperor.

 

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