New and Selected Poems by Charles Simic

astonishment.
In a mirror my face appeared to me
Like a twice-canceled postage stamp.
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I lived well, but life was awful.
There were so many soldiers that day,
So many refugees crowding the roads.
Naturally, they all vanished
With a touch of the hand.
History licked the corners of its bloody mouth.
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On the pay channel, a man and a woman
Were trading hungry kisses and tearing off
Each other’s clothes while I looked on
With the sound off and the room dark
Except for the screen where the color
Had too much red in it, too much pink.
A Wedding in Hell
They were pale like the stones on the meadow
The black sheep lick.
Pale stones like children in their Sunday clothes
Playing at bride and groom.
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There we found a clock face with Roman numerals
In the old man’s overcoat pocket.
He kept looking at the sky without recognizing it,
And now it was time for a little rain to fall.
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Your sheltering hands, Mother, which made the old man disappear.
The Lord who saw over them
Saw into our hearts while we unlaced his boots.
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I’m turning off the lights so His eyes won’t find you, you said.
O dreams like evening shadows on a windy meadow,
And your hands, Mother, like white mice.
The Dead in Photographs
All they could do is act innocent
Standing still for the camera,
Only a few of them thinking to move
And leave a blur for posterity.
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Others held their smiles forever.
The groom with a suit too big for him,
And his bride with a small straw hat
And a topping of strawberries.
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In Los Angeles, one Sunday morning,
The photographer took a picture
Of a closed barbershop
And a black cat crossing an empty avenue,
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A blind man outside a bus station
Playing the guitar and singing,
A little boy walking up to the camera
Smiling and sticking his tongue out.
Madame Thebes
That awful deceit of appearances.
Some days
Everything looks unfamiliar
On my street.
It’s somebody else’s life I’m living.
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An immaculate silent order
Of white buildings and dark clouds,
And then the open door
In a house with lowered voices.
Someone left in a hurry,
And they’re waiting for me to come in
With a lit match.
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There’s a rustle of a long skirt,
But when I enter
It’s only the evening papers
Sliding off the table
Birdlike
In a large and drafty
And now altogether empty room.
Evening Visitor
You remind me of those dwarfs in Velázquez.
Former dogcatcher
Promoted to professor at a correspondence school
With a matchbook address.
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That couple screwing and watching
Themselves in the mirror,
Do you approve of them
As they gasp and roll their eyes in ecstasy?
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And how about the solitary wine drinker?
He’s drinking because he can’t decide
Whether to kill only one of them or both—
And here it’s already morning!
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Some damn bird chirping in the trees.
Is that it? I beseech you. Answer me!
The Massacre of the Innocents
The poets of the Late Tang Dynasty
Could do nothing about it except to write:
“On the western hills the sun sets . . .
Horses blown by the whirlwind tread the clouds.”
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I could not help myself either. I felt joy
Even at the sight of a crow circling over me
As I stretched out on the grass
Alone now with the silence of the sky.
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Only the wind making a slight rustle
As it turned the pages of the book by my side,
Back and forth, searching for something
For that bloody crow to read.
Pascal’s Idea
My insignificance is a sign of my greatness.
Marvel, draw back
As I scurry in my roachlike way
Through these greasy kitchens
With their raised knives
And their fat-assed cooks
Bent over steaming pots.
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My life is a triumph over the world’s connivances
And blind chance.
I found the poison you left for me
Extremely nourishing.
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Once I sipped milk out of a saucer left for the cat.
Once I ran across a birthday cake
With its candles already lit.
It was terrifying
And I suppose a bit like
What your heaven and hell combined