Free New and Selected Poems by Charles Simic Page B

noise.
It was the kind of day
People described as “perfect.”
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Gods disguising themselves
As black hairpins, a hand mirror,
A comb with a tooth missing?
No! That wasn’t it.
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Just things as they are,
Unblinking, lying mute
In that bright light—
And the trees waiting for the night.
Winter Sunset
Such skies came to worry men
On the eve of great battles
With clouds soaked in blood
Fleeing the armies of the night,
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An old woman was summoned
Who could predict the future,
But she kept her mouth shut
Even when shown the naked sword.
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In what remained of the light,
The white village church
Clutched its bird-shaped weathervane
Above the low rooftops.
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A small child, who had been
Nursing at his mother’s breast,
Hid his face from her
To see the horses rear in the sky.
The Pieces of the Clock Lie Scattered
So, hurry up!
The evening’s coming.
The grownups are on the way.
There’ll be hell to pay.
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You forgot about time
While you sought its secret
In the slippery wheels,
Some of which had teeth.
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You meant to enthrall
The girl across the hall.
She drew so near,
Her breast brushed your ear.
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She ought to have gone home,
But you kept telling her
You’ll have it together again
And ticking in no time.
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Instead, you’re under the table
Together, searching the floor.
Your hands are trembling,
And there’s a key in the door.
The Immortal
You’re shivering, O my memory.
You went out early and without a coat
To visit your old schoolmasters,
The cruel schoolmasters and their pet monkeys.
You took a wrong turn somewhere.
You met an army of gray days,
A ghost army of years on the march.
It was the bread they fed you,
The kind it takes a lifetime to chew.
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You found yourself again on that street
Inside that small, rented room
With its single dusty window.
Outside it was snowing quietly,
Snowing and snowing for days on end.
You were ill and in bed.
Everyone else had gone to work.
The blind old woman next door,
Whose sighs and heavy steps you’d welcome now,
Had died mysteriously in the summer.
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You had your own heartbeat to attend to.
You were perfectly alone and anonymous.
It would have taken months for anyone
To begin to miss you. The chill
Made you pull the covers up to your chin.
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You remembered the lost arctic voyagers,
The evening snow erasing their footprints.
You had no money and no job.
Both of your lungs were hurting; still,
You had no intention of lifting a finger
To help yourself. You were immortal!
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Outside, the same dark snowflake
Seemed to be falling over and over again.
You studied the cracked walls,
The maplike water stain on the ceiling,
Trying to fix in your mind its cities and rivers.
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Time had stopped at dusk.
You were shivering at the thought
Of such great happiness.
At the Corner
The fat sisters
Kept a candy store
Dim and narrow
With dusty jars
Of jawbreaking candy.
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We stayed thin, stayed
Glum, chewing gum
While staring at the floor,
The shoes of many strangers
Rushing in and out,
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Making the papers outside
Flutter audibly
Under the lead weights,
Their headlines
Screaming in and out of view.
Cabbage
She was about to chop the head
In half,
But I made her reconsider
By telling her:
“Cabbage symbolizes mysterious love.”
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Or so said one Charles Fourier,
Who said many other strange and wonderful things,
So that people called him mad behind his back,
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Whereupon I kissed the back of her neck
Ever so gently,
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Whereupon she cut the cabbage in two
With a single stroke of her knife.
The Initiate
St. John of the Cross wore dark glasses
When he passed me on the street.
St. Therese of Ávila, beautiful and grave,
Came at me spreading her wings like a seagull.
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“Lost soul,” they both cried out,
“Where is your home?”
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I was one of death’s juggling balls.
The city was a mystic circus
With all of its lights dimmed,
The night’s performance already