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

buzz from the suite with mirrors.
Amelia in the nude, black cotton over her eyes.
It seems there’s a fly
Pestering her lover’s Roman nose.
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Night of distant guns, muffled and comfortable.
I am running with a flyswatter on a silver tray
Strewn with Turkish delights
And the Mask of Tragedy to cover her pubic hair.
At the Night Court
You’ve combed yourself carefully,
Your Honor, with a small fine-tooth comb
You then cleverly concealed
Before making your entrance
In the splendor of your black robes.
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The comb tucked inside a handkerchief
Scented with the extract of dead roses—
While you took your high seat
Sternly eyeing each of the accused
In the hush of the empty courtroom.
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The dark curly hairs in the comb
Did not come from your graying head.
One of the cleaning women used it on herself
While you dozed off in your chambers
Half undressed because of the heat.
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The black comb in the pocket over the heart,
You feel it tremble just as ours do
When they ready themselves to make music
Lacking only the paper you’re signing,
By the looks of it, with eyes closed.
Dark Farmhouses
Windy evening,
China-blue snow,
The old people are shivering
In their kitchens.
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Truck without lights
Idling on the highway,
Is it a driver you require?
Wait a bit.
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There’s coal to load up,
A widow’s sack of coal.
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Is it a shovel you need?
Idle on,
A shovel will come by and by
Over the darkening plain.
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A shovel,
And a spade.
Popular Mechanics
The enormous engineering problems
You’ll encounter attempting to crucify yourself
Without helpers, pulleys, cogwheels,
And other clever mechanical contrivances—
    Â 
In a small, bare, white room,
With only a loose-legged chair
To reach the height of the ceiling—
Only a shoe to beat the nails in.
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Not to mention being naked for the occasion—
So that each rib and muscle shows.
Your left hand already spiked in,
Only the right to wipe the sweat with,
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To help yourself to a butt
From the overflowed ashtray,
You won’t quite manage to light—
And the night coming, the clever night.
The Fly
He was writing the History of Optimism
In Time of Madness. It was raining.
One of the local butcher’s largest
Carrion fanciers kept pestering him.
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There was a cat too watching the fly,
And a gouty-footed old woman
In a dirty bathrobe and frayed slippers
Bringing in a cup of pale tea.
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With many sighs and long pauses
He found a bit of blue sky on the day of the Massacre of
      the Innocents.
He found a couple of lovers,
A meadow strewn with yellow flowers . . .
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But he couldn’t go on . . . O blue-winged, shivering one,
      he whispered.
Some days it’s like using a white cane
And seeing mostly shadows
As one gropes for the words that come next!
Outside a Dirtroad Trailer
O exegetes, somber hermeneuts,
Ingenious untanglers of ambiguities,
A bald little man was washing
The dainty feet of a very fat woman.
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In a chair under a soaring shade tree,
She kept giggling and shaking her huge breasts.
There was also a boy with glasses
Engrossed in a book of serious appearance.
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One black sock drying on the line,
A parked hearse with trash cans in the back,
And a large flag hanging limp from the pole
On a day as yet unproclaimed as a holiday.
Dear Helen
There’s a thing in the world
Called a sea cucumber.
I know nothing about it.
It just sounds cold and salty.
I think a salad of such cukes
Would be fine today.
I would have to dive for it, though,
Deep into the treacherous depths
While you mince the garlic
And sip the white wine
Into which the night is falling.
I should be back soon
With those lovely green vegetables
Out of the shark-infested sea.
Trees in the Open Country
    for Jim
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Like those who were eyewitnesses
to an enormity
And have since remained downcast
At the very spot,
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Their shadows gradually lengthening
Into what look like canes, badly