With my already bitten,
Already bleeding tongue.
Things Need Me
City of poorly loved chairs, bedroom slippers, frying pans,
I’m rushing back to you
Passing every car on the highway,
Searching for you with my bright headlights
Down the dark, empty streets.
O you heartless people who can’t wait
To go to the beach tomorrow morning,
What about the black-and-white photo of the grandparents
You are abandoning?
What about the mirrors, the potted plants and the
coat hangers?
Dead alarm clock, empty birdcage, piano I never play,
I’ll be your waiter tonight
Ready to take your order,
And you’ll be my distinguished dinner guests,
Each one with a story to tell.
One-Man Circus
Juggler of hats and live hand grenades.
Tumbler, contortionist, impersonator,
Living statue, wire walker, escape artist,
Amateur ventriloquist and mind reader
Doing all that without being detected
While leisurely strolling down the street,
Buying a newspaper on some corner,
Bending down to pat a blind man’s dog,
Or sitting across from your wife at dinner,
While she prattles about the weather,
Concentrating instead on a trapeze in your head,
The tigers pacing angrily in their cage.
Lingering Ghosts
Give me a long dark night and no sleep,
And I’ll visit every place I have ever lived,
Starting with the house where I was born.
I’ll sit in my parents’ dimmed bedroom
Straining to hear the tick of their clock.
I’ll roam the old neighborhood hunting for friends,
Enter junk-filled backyards where trees
Look like war cripples on crutches,
Stop by a tree stump where Grandma
Made roosters and hens walk around headless.
A black cat will slip out of the shadows
And rub herself against my leg
To let me know she’ll be my guide tonight
On this street with its missing buildings,
Missing faces and few lingering ghosts.
Ventriloquist Convention
For those troubled in mind
Afraid to remain alone
With their own thoughts,
Who quiz every sound
The night makes around them,
A discreet tap on the door,
A whispered invitation
To where they have all gathered
In a room down the hall
Ready to entertain you
In a voice of your parents,
The pretty girl you knew once,
One or two dead friends
All pressing close to you
As if wishing to share a secret,
The one with slick black hair
Leaning into your face,
Eyes popping out of his head,
His mouth hanging down
Like a butcher’s bloody scale.
The Future
It must have a reason for concealing
Its many surprises from us,
And that reason must have something to do
With either compassion or malice.
I know that most of us fear it,
And that surely is the explanation
We’ve never been properly introduced,
Though we are neighbors
Who run into each other often
By accident and then stand there
Speechless and embarrassed,
Before pretending to be distracted
By some children walking to school,
A pigeon pecking at a pizza crust
Next to a hearse filled with flowers
Parked in front of a small, gray church.
Softly
Lay the knife and fork by your plate.
Here, where it’s always wartime,
It’s prudent to break bread unobserved,
Take small sips of wine or beer
Sneaking glances at your companions.
June evening, how your birds worry me.
I can hear them rejoicing in the trees
Oblivious of the troubles that lie ahead.
The fly on the table is more cautious
And so are my bare feet under the table.
Hundreds of bloody flags fleeing at sunset
Across the darkening plains.
Some general leading another army into defeat,
While you pour honey over the walnuts,
And I wait my turn to lick the spoon.
The Starry Sky
Taken as a whole, it’s a mystery.
An apparent order concealing a disorder
That would shake us to the core
Were we ever to grasp its senselessness,
Its infinite, raging madness,
Which, for all we know, may be contagious
And explains our terror
At seeing these crowds at the end of day
Convinced a murderer or a lunatic
We’ll be hearing about on the late news
Strolls among them now peacefully,
Or so I was telling the old Mrs. Murphy
Who was on her way to church
To pray for the soul of her dead husband,
Who she suspected was in hell
And needed to hear her voice as he burned.
Solitude in Hotels
Where you went to hide from everyone
In a city people visit for other reasons,
In a room with a Don’t Disturb sign
Left on the door day and night,
While you sat around in your underwear
Staring at the dead TV screen for hours,
Waiting for after midnight to sneak
Past the desk clerk in the lobby and visit
Some ill-lit dive in the neighborhood
For a beer or two and a bite to eat
Then a walk along dark, deserted streets
In no hurry and no direction in mind,
Slipping back into bed toward daybreak
To lie awake listening to the rain,
While the leaves outside the window
Turn the color of fire, the one you read
Was started by some boy in church
To impress his pale and silent girlfriend.
In the Egyptian Wing of the Museum
Against a coffin thickly ornamented
With paintings representing
The burial rites and duties of the soul
They undid each other’s buttons
With all of their fingers on fire.
He, upright like an unicyclist
Going up a pyramid.
She, like a white dove fluttering
In the hands of a magician
Performing at a mortician’s convention,
While the dog-headed god
Weighed a dead man’s heart
Against a single feather,
And the ibis-headed one
Made ready to record the outcome.
Grandpa’s Spells
I hate to hear birds sing
Come spring, the wood turn green
And little flowers sprout
Along the country roads.
Bleak skies, short days,
And long nights please me best.
I like to cloister myself
Watching my thoughts roam
Like a homeless family
Holding on to their children
And their few possessions
Seeking shelter for the night.
And I love most of all knowing
I’m here today, gone tomorrow,
The dark sneaking up on me,
To blow out
the match in my hand.
Trouble Coming
One saw signs of it in certain families.
The future was like an unfriendly waiter
Standing ready to take their dinner order
From a menu they could not read.
To look without understanding was their lot
While a salesman in the TV store
Kept changing channels too quickly
For them to retain a single image.
The little flags freshly posted in a cemetery
Said nothing as they hung listlessly
In the early-summer breeze,
Not that anybody particularly noticed.
The sunset over the approaching city
Was like a banquet in a madhouse
The inmates were happily setting on fire
Just as our train ducked into a tunnel.
Nothing Else
Friends of the small hours of the night:
Stub of a pencil, small notebook,
Reading lamp on the table,
I care little the house is dark and cold
With you sharing my absorption
In this book in which now and then a sentence
Is worth repeating in a whisper.
Without you, there’d be only my pale face
Reflected in the black windowpane,
And the bare trees and deep snow
Waiting for me out there in the dark.
The Foundlings
Time’s hurrying me, putting me to the test
To picture to myself what comes next.
My mind is eager. I no longer plead with it
To keep still so we can get some rest.
We’ve been this way far too long now.
Like newborn twins, left side by side
On the same church steps by their mother
For some pious early riser to find us,
And either give a shout or take us home,
We’ll stay here comforting each other.
Soon now these stone steps will turn pink
And the pigeons and the sparrows
Will fly down to them in search for crumbs
The blind old men who beg here for alms
Let drop as they ate their bread in the dark.
Strange Feast
It makes my heart glad to hear one of these
Chirpy little birds just back from Mexico—
Or wherever it is they spend their winters—
Come and sit in a tree outside my window.
I want to stay in bed all morning
Listening to the returning ones greet the friends
They left behind, since in their rapture
At being together, I find my own joy,
As if a festive table was being set in the garden
By two composed and somber women
Clad in dresses too light for this time of year,
Mindful every glass and fork is in its proper place,
Leaving me uncertain whether to close my eyes,
Or to hurry in shorts over the old snow
And make sure the dishes they’ve laid out
Are truly there to be savored by one like me.
In a Dark House
One night, as I was dropping off to sleep,
I saw a strip of light under a door
I had never noticed was there before,
And both feared and wanted
To go over and knock on it softly.
In a dark house, where a strip of light
Under a door I didn’t know existed
Appeared and disappeared, as if they
Had turned off the light and lay awake
Like me waiting for what comes next.
Index
A bear who eats with a silver spoon, [>]
A bird calls me, [>]
A Book Full of Pictures, [>]
A century of gathering clouds..., [>]
A child crying in the night, [>]
A dog trying to write a poem on why he barks, [>]
A few couples walk off into the dark, [>]
Against a coffin thickly ornamented, [>]
Against the backdrop, [>]
Against Whatever It Is That’s Encroaching, [>]
Against Winter, [>]
A house with a screened-in porch, [>]
Ah the great, [>]
A Landscape with Crutches, [>]
A large stock of past lives, [>]
A Letter, [>]
All shivers, [>]
All they could do is act innocent, [>]
All they need, [>]
Ambiguity’s Wedding, [>]
A message for you, [>]
An Address with Exclamation Points, [>]
Ancient Autumn, [>]
Ancient Divinities, [>]
And again the screech of the scaffold, [>]
And how are the rats doing in the maze?, [>]
And Then I Think, [>]
And thinking with each mouthful, [>]
Animal Acts, [>]
An old dog afraid of his own shadow, [>]
An old spoon, [>]
Another dreary day in time’s invisible, [>]
Another grim-lipped day coming our way, [>]
A poem about sitting on . . . , [>]
A rat came on stage, [>]
Are Russian cannibals worse . . . , [>]
Are these mellifluous sheep, [>]
Are you authorized to speak, [>]
Are you the sole owner of a seedy nightclub?, [>]
Ariadne’s bird, [>]
A Row of High Windows, [>]
As an ant is powerless, [>]
As if there were nothing to live for . . . , [>]
As if you had a message for me . . . , [>]
A small, straw basket, [>]
At least one crucified at every corner, [>]
At the close of a sweltering night, [>]
At the Cookout, [>]
At the Corner, [>]
At the Night Court, [>]
At times, reading here, [>]
Aunt Dinah Sailed to China, [>]
Austerities, [>]
Autumn Sky, [>]
A Wall, [>]
A Wedding in Hell, [>]
Baby Pictures of Famous Dictators, [>]
Backed myself into a dark corner one day, [>]
Battling Grays, [>]
Bearded ancestors, what became of you?, [>]
Beauty, [>]
Because few here recall the old wars, [>]
Because I’m nothing you can name, [>]
Befriending an eccentric young woman, [>]
Begotten of the Spleen, [>]
Bestiary for the Fingers of My Right Hand, [>]
Best of all is to be idle, [>]
Blood Orange, [>]
Book Lice, [>]
Breasts, [>]
Bride of Awe, all that’s left for us, [>]
Brooms, [>]
Bumble Bee, Soldier Bug, Mormon Cricket, [>]
Butcher Shop, [>]
Cabbage, [>]
Café Paradiso, [>]
Cameo Appearance, [>]
Car Graveyard, [>]
Carrying On Like a Crow, [>]
Charles Simic, [>]
Charles Simic is a sentence, [>]
Charm School, [>]
Charon’s Cosmology, [>]
Cherry Blossom Time, [>]
Child of sorrow, [>]
City of poorly loved chairs, bedroom slippers, frying pans, [>]
Classic Ballroom Dances, [>]
Clouds Gathering, [>]
Club Midnight, [>]
Cockroach, [>]
Cold Blue Tinge, [>]
Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites, [>]
Country Fair, [>]
Couple at Coney Island, [>]
Crazy About Her Shrimp, [>]
Crepuscule with Nellie, [>]
Crows, [>]
Dance of the Macabre Mice, [>]
Dark Farmhouses, [>]
Dark morning rain, [>]
Daughters of Memory, [>]
Dear Helen, [>]
Dear philosophers, I get sad when I think, [>]
Death, the Philosopher, [>]
December, [>]
De Occulta Philosophia, [>]
Description of a Lost Thing, [>]
Devotions, [>]
Discreet reader of discreet lives, [>]
Dismantling the Silence, [>]
Dream Avenue, [>]
Driving Home, [>]
Early Evening Algebra, [>]
Eastern European Cooking, [>]
Elegy, [>]
El libro de la sexualidad, [>]
Emily’s Theme, [>]
Empire of Dreams, [>]
Empires, [>]
Empty Barbershop, [>]
Empty Rocking Chair, [>]
Encyclopedia of Horror, [>]
Entertaining the Canary, [>]
errata, [>]
Eternities, [>]
Eternity’s Orphans, [>]
Evening, [>]
Evening Chess, [>]
Evenings of sovereign clarity—, [>]
Evenings, they ran their bloody feet, [>]
Evening sunlight, [>]
Evening Talk, [>]
Evening Visitor, [>]
Evening Walk, [>]