The Lunatic

Charles Simic

• Publisher: Ecco
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780062364760
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

From Pulitzer Prize winner and former Poet Laureate Charles Simic comes a dazzling collection of poems as original, meditative, and humorous as the legendary poet himself.

This latest volume of poetry from Charles Simic, one of America's most celebrated poets, demonstrates his revered signature style—a mix of understated brilliance, wry melancholy, and sardonic wit. These seventy luminous poems range in subject from mortality to personal ads, from the simple wonders of nature to his childhood in war-torn Yugoslavia.

For over fifty years, Simic has delighted readers with his innovative form, quiet humor, and his rare ability to limn our interior life and concisely capture the depth of human emotion. These stunning, succinct poems—most no longer than a page, some no longer than a paragraph—validate and reinforce Simic's importance and relevance in modern poetry.

I

TODAY’S MENU

All we got, mister,

Is an empty bowl and a spoon

For you to slurp

Great mouthfuls of nothing,

And make it sound like

A thick, dark soup you’re eating,

Steaming hot

Out of the empty bowl.

BREEDER OF BLACK CATS

Carrying a fresh litter of them

In pockets of his overcoat

As he meanders down the street,

Letting a kitten loose here and there

To run free as a warning to me

And to everyone else in sight,

While donning his dark glasses,

Hoping not to be recognized

Entering a flower shop to buy flowers

For one or two upcoming funerals.

THE LUNATIC

The same snowflake

Kept falling out of the gray sky

All afternoon,

Falling and falling

And picking itself up

Off the ground,

To fall again,

But now more surreptitiously,

More carefully

As night strolled over

To see what’s up.

O SPRING

O Spring, if I were to face a firing squad

On a day like this, I’d wear

One of your roadside flowers

Behind my ear, lift my chin high

Like a pastry cook standing

Next to a prize-winning wedding cake,

Smile like a hairdresser

Giving Cameron Diaz a shampoo.

Lovely day, you passed through town

Like a Mardi Gras parade

With ladies wearing colorful plumage on their heads

Riding on your floats,

Leaving the moon in the sky

To be our night watchman and check with its lantern

On every last patch of snow

That may be hiding in the woods.

ABOUT MYSELF

I’m the uncrowned king of the insomniacs

Who still fights his ghosts with a sword,

A student of ceilings and closed doors,

Making bets two plus two is not always four.

A merry old soul playing the accordion

On the graveyard shift in the morgue.

A fly escaped from a head of a madman,

Taking a rest on the wall next to his head.

Descendant of village priests and blacksmiths:

A grudging stage assistant of two

Renowned and invisible master illusionists,

One called God, the other Devil, assuming, of course,

I’m the person I represent myself to be.

ETERNITIES

Small store, is it only cobwebs

And shadows you sell?

I saw my pale reflection

In your dimmed-out interior

Like a gentleman burglar

Unable to make up his mind

Between a pearl necklace

And an antique clock on the wall.

Raindrops blurred the rest,

Trickling down the glass

I pressed my forehead against

As if to cool down its fevers.

LATE-NIGHT INQUIRY

Have you introduced yourself to yourself

The way a visitor at your door would?

Have you found a seat in your room

For every one of your wayward selves

To withdraw into their own thoughts

Or stare into space as if it were a mirror?

Do you have a match you can light

To make their shadows dance on the wall

Or float dream-like on the ceiling

The way leaves do on summer afternoons,

Before they take their bow and the curtain drops

As the match burns down t...