Charles Simic: At Tender Mercy

O lone streetlight,
Trying to shed
What light you can
On a spider repairing his web
This autumn night,
Stay with me,
As I push further and further
Into the dark.

Charles Simić: Empires

My grandmother prophesied the end
Of your empires, O fools!
She was ironing. The radio was on.
The earth trembled beneath our feet.
One of your heroes was giving a speech.
“Monster,” she called him.
There were cheers and gun salutes for the monster.
“I could kill him with my bare hands,”
She announced to me.
There was no need to. They were all
Going to the devil any day now.
“Don’t go blabbering this to anyone,”
She warned me.
And pulled my ear to make sure I understood.

Charles Simić: Dictionary

Maybe there is a word in it somewhere
to describe the world this morning,
a word for the way the early light
takes delight in chasing the darkness
out of store windows and doorways.

Another word for the way it lingers
over a pair of wire-rimmed glasses
someone let drop on the sidewalk
last night and staggered off blindly
talking to himself or breaking into song.

Charles Simic: My Beloved

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.

Whe 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.

Charles Simic: Gallows Etiquette

Our sainted great-great

Grandmothers 

Used to sit and knit 

Under the gallows. 

No one remembers what it was 

They were knitting 

And what happened when the ball of yarn 

Rolled out of their laps 

And had to be retrieved. 

One pictures the hooded executioner 

And his pasty-faced victim 

Interrupting their grim business 

To come quickly to their aid. 

Confirmed pessimists 

And other party poopers 

Categorically reject 

Such far-fetched notions 

Of gallows etiquette.

Charles Simic: In the Library

There’s a book called
A Dictionary of Angels.
No one had opened it in fifty years,
I know, because when I did,
The covers creaked, the pages
Crumbled. There I discovered

The angels were once as plentiful
As species of flies.
The sky at dusk
Used to be thick with them.
You had to wave both arms
Just to keep them away.

Now the sun is shining
Through the tall windows.
The library is a quiet place.
Angels and gods huddled
In dark unopened books.
The great secret lies
On some shelf Miss Jones
Passes every day on her rounds.

She’s very tall, so she keeps
Her head tipped as if listening.
The books are whispering.
I hear nothing, but she does.

Charles Simic: Hide and Seek

Haven’t found anyone
From the old gang.
They must be still in hiding,
Holding their breaths
And trying not to laugh.

Our street is down on its luck
With windows broken
Where on summer nights
One heard couples arguing,
Or saw them dancing to the radio.

The redhead we were
All in love with,
Who sat on the fire escape,
Smoking late into the night,
Must be in hiding too.

The skinny boy
On crutches
Who always carried a book,
May not have
Gotten very far.

Darkness comes early
This time of year
Making it hard
To recognize familiar faces
In those of strangers.

Charles Simic: fear

Fear passes from man to man
Unknowing,
As one leaf passes its shudder
To another.
All at once the whole tree is trembling,
And there is no sign of the wind.

Charles Simic: Words Are Living Things

Words make love on the page
like flies in the summer heat
and the poet is only
the bemused spectator.

Charles Simic: Stone

Go inside a stone
That would be my way.
Let somebody else become a dove
Or gnash with a tiger’s tooth.
I am happy to be a stone.

From the outside the stone is a riddle:
No one knows how to answer it.
Yet within, it must be cool and quiet
Even though a cow steps on it full weight,
Even though a child throws it in a river;
The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed
To the river bottom
Where the fishes come to knock on it
And listen.

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.

Charles Simic: Watermelons

Green Buddhas
On the fruit stand.
We eat the smile
And spit out the teeth.