Scribbled in the Dark

Poems

Charles Simic

• Publisher: Ecco
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780062661173
• eBook ISBN: 9780062661197
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning former poet laureate, a collection of elegiac, irreverent new poems—an American master at the height of his talent

 The latest volume of poetry from Charles Simic hums with the liveliness of the writer’s pen. Scribbled in the Dark brings the poet’s signature sardonic sense of humor, piercing social insight, and haunting lyricism to diverse and richly imagined landscapes. Peopled by policemen, presidents, kids in Halloween masks, a fortune-teller, a fly on the wall of the poet’s kitchen; set on crowded New York streets, on park benches, and under darkened skies; the pages within toy with the end of the world and its infinity. Simic continues to be an imitable voice in modern American poetry and one of its finest chroniclers of the human condition.

II

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.

IN WONDER

I cursed someone or something

Tossing and turning all night—

Or so I was told, though I had no memory

Who it could be, so I stared

At the world out there in wonder.

The frost lay pretty on the bushes

Like tinsel over a Christmas tree,

When a limo as long as a hearse

Crept into view stopping at each

Mailbox as if in search of a name,

And not finding it sped away,

Its tires squealing like a piglet

Lifted into the air by a butcher.

IN THE SNOW

Tracks of someone lost,

Bleakly preoccupied,

Meandering blindly

In these here woods,

Licking his wounds

And crunching the snow,

As he trudges on,

Bereft and baffled,

In mounting terror

With no way out,

Jinxed at every turn,

A mystery to himself.

ANCIENT COMBATANT

Veteran of foreign wars,

Stiff in arm and leg,

His baggy pants billowing in the wind

Salutes a crow in a tree,

And resumes his stroll

Past a small graveyard,

Swerving and waving his arms

As if besieged by ghosts

Lurking among headstones,

Waiting to accost him

And make a clean breast

Before he slips out of sight.

The tiger lilies bemused.

The curving dirt road in his wake

Deep in silence

And prey to lengthening shadows.

THE NIGHT AND THE COLD

Torturers with happy faces,

You’ve made a prisoner strip naked

And stand strung with electric wires

Like a Christmas tree

In a department store window

Next to a smiling family gathered

Around a fake brick fireplace.

And as for you, men and women

Sprawled in dark doorways,

Along this street I’m walking,

Stuff your clothes with more newspaper,

The night will be long and cold.

ALL THINGS IN PRECIPITOUS DECLINE

Like a pickup with its wheels gone,

And some rusty and disassembled

Antique stoves and refrigerators

In a front yard choked with weeds,

Outside a shack with a plastic sheet

Draped over one of its windows,

Where a beer bottle went through

One star-studded night in June—

Or was it a shotgun we heard?

The police inquiry, if there is one,

Is proceeding at a snail’s pace,

In the meantime, the old recluse

Got himself a bad-tempered mutt

To keep his junk company and bark

At all comers, including the mailman

Leaving a rare letter in the mailbox.

THE CRICKET ON MY PILLOW

His emaciated head and legs

Speak of long fasts, frantic prayers,

Dark nights of the soul,

And other unknown torments,

Before he found refuge in our home

From that madman out there

Who threw over his bed

A heavy blanket of snow.

WINTER FLY

You ought to live in a palace like a king

And not shiver on my kitchen wall,

Have a bed and chair made to measure

And a radio playing the latest hits

The flies in Dakar and Rio are humming,

While servants serve you pastries

On plates bearing your coat of arms,

And your courtiers look to catch you

A lady companion from among the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• I
• II
• III
• IV
• About the Author
• Also by Charles Simic
• Credits
• Copyright
• About the Publisher