January
Children’s fingerprints
On a frozen window
Of a small schoolhouse.
An empire, I read somewhere,
Maintains itself through
The cruelty of its prisons.
The Election
They promised us free lunch
And all we got Edna
Is wind and rain
And these broken umbrellas
To wield angrily
At cars and buses
Eager to run us over
As we struggle to cross the street.
The trash on the streets, the way people were dressed, the tall buildings, the dirt, the heat, the yellow cabs, the billboards and signs. It was terrifically ugly and beautiful at the same time. I liked America immediately. A Fly in the Soup memoir by Charles Simic, 2003 on his arrival in New York
Could That Be Me?
An alarm clock
With no hands
Ticking loudly
On the town dump.
Astronomy Lesson
The silent laughter
Of the stars
In the night sky
Tells us all
We need to know.
And this prose poem from The World Doesn’t End (1987) is like stepping into the surreal world of a painting by René Magritte.
The White Cat
Mother was beginning to worry about me.
Moping around, still unmarried,
Destined to sit in the same gray sweater
And the same chair for the rest of my life,
Playing with the same three buttons.
I bought her a radio to cheer her up.
Even dance music sounded sad to her.
The quiet was better, especially on Sundays.
Together we’d watch the rain fall,
The night come, weary of being night,
And having to turn up at the appointed hour
Wearing the same black garments.
The buildings across the street were dark
While the sky had suddenly cleared.
I thought I heard Mother call my name,
So I covered my ears with my hands
And watched a white cat with its tail raised,
Walking cautiously along the parapet,
Stop and take a peek in every window.
Angora Cat (1937) seen last week on a visit to the Morris Hirshfield Rediscovered exhibit at the American Folk Art Museum in New York City.
Poetry is always the cat concert under the window of the room in which the official version of reality is being written.”- Charles Simic
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Loved this so much I have ordered the volume with Astronomy Lesson in it. Other Gert is of course a longterm aficionado of Charles Simic.
The Gerts always have such reliable discrimination and discernment!
Yay for Simic appreciators everywhere!
If one word could describe these poems, I suppose the word would be "bittersweet" (which, coincidentally, pretty much describes how I see life).
A lovely way to pay tribute to his passing. Let the poems speak for themselves. Thanks.
love these poems, esp the one about the cat; love anything Charles Simic: I have read all his poetry collections --
That's a lot more than me!
But they are wonderful and that means I have more to discover.
Excellent selection. (K)
Thanks. Hard to go wrong with Simic though!.
surreal poems that reach under the skin
Perfect way to describe them.
I like these.
Wow, who knew about Charles Simic. The poems are wonderful -- simple, exact metaphors, interesting situations and subjects. The clock with no hands really hit me hard. Keep them coming,
Brilliant right?
About the alarm clock and the dump:
In an interview with The Paris Review, Simic said, "It’s not a metaphor. The dump is a place where I’ve spent a lot of time. I’m about five minutes from the dump. It used to be a very different dump. It started out being just one little place filled with garbage. And then it became more complicated, with everything sorted out. But I’m an aficionado of the old, old dump where many, many years ago I found a big alarm clock, an old-fashioned alarm clock, happily ticking."