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Scribbled in the Dark
Charles Simic
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- English
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eBook - ePub
Scribbled in the Dark
Charles Simic
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About This Book
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.
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Information
Topic
LittératureSubtopic
PoésieII
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 ...