New and Selected Poems by Charles Simic Read Free Book Online Page A

impossible
To compose in our day.
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There were scaffolds,
Makeshift stages,
Puny figures on them,
Like small indistinct animals
Caught in the headlights
Crossing the road way ahead,
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In the gray twilight
That went on hesitating
On the verge of a huge
Starless autumn night.
One could’ve been in
The back of an open truck
Hunkering because of
The speed and chill.
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One could’ve been walking
With a sidelong glance
At the many troubling shapes
The bare trees made—
Like those about to shriek,
But finding themselves unable
To utter a word now.
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One could’ve been in
One of these dying mill towns
Inside a small dim grocery
When the news broke.
One would’ve drawn near the radio
With the one many months pregnant
Who serves there at that hour.
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Was there a smell of
Spilled blood in the air,
Or was it that other,
Much finer scent—of fear,
The fear of approaching death
One met on the empty street?
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Monsters on movie posters, too,
Prominently displayed.
Then, six factory girls,
Arm in arm, laughing
As if they’ve been drinking.
At the very least, one
Could’ve been one of them.
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The one with a mouth
Painted bright red,
Who feels out of sorts,
For no reason, very pale,
And so, excusing herself,
Vanishes where it says
Rooms for Rent,
And immediately goes to bed,
Fully dressed, only
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To lie with eyes open,
Trembling, despite the covers.
It’s just a bad chill,
She keeps telling herself
Not having seen the papers
Which the landlord has the dog
Bring from the front porch.
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The old man never learned
To read well, and so
Reads on in that half-whisper,
And in that half-light
Verging on the dark,
About that day’s tragedies
Which supposedly are not
Tragedies in the absence of
Figures endowed with
Classic nobility of soul.
Early Evening Algebra
The madwoman went marking
X
’s
With a piece of school chalk
On the backs of unsuspecting
Hand-holding, homebound couples.
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It was winter. It was dark already.
One could not see her face
Bundled up as she was and furtive.
She went as if windswept, as if crow-winged.
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The chalk must have been given to her by a child.
One kept looking for him in the crowd,
Expecting him to be very pale, very serious,
Carrying a book or two in his hand.
Ever So Tragic
Heart—as in Latin pop songs
Blaring from the pool hall radio.
The air had thickened, the evening air.
He took off his white shirt.
The heart, one could mark it
With lipstick on a bare chest,
The way firing-squad commanders mark it.
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He was reading in the papers
About the artificial heart.
The same plastic they use for wind-up toys,
She thought. More likely
Like an old wheelbarrow to push:
Heart of stone, knife grinder’s
Stone . . .
                    Later
It was raining and they got into bed.
O desire, O futile hope, O sighs!

In coal miner’s pit and lantern:
The heart, the bright red heart . . .
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Didn’t the blind man just call
His little dog that?
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Hearts make haste, hasten on!
For the Sake of Amelia
Tending a cliff-hanging Grand Hotel
In a country ravaged by civil war.
My heart as its only bellhop.
My brain as its Chinese cook.
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It’s a rundown seaside place
With a row of gutted limousines out front,
Monkeys and fighting cocks in the great ballroom,
Potted palm trees grown wild to the ceilings.
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Amelia surrounded by her beaus and fortunetellers,
Painting her eyelashes and lips blue
In the hour of dusk with the open sea beyond,
The long empty beaches, the tide’s shimmer . . .
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She pleading with me to check the ledgers,
Find out if Lenin stayed here once,
Buster Keaton, Nathaniel Hawthorne,
St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who wrote on love?
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A hotel in which one tangos to a silence
Dark as cypresses in silent films . . .
In which children confide to imaginary friends . . .
In which pages of an important letter are flying . . .
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But now a