Charles Simic

There are one or two murderers in any crowd. They do not suspect their destinies yet. Wars are started to make it easy for them To kill that woman pushing a baby carriage. The animals in the zoo don’t hide their worry. They pace their cages or shy [...]

My soul is a ghost ship Set adrift on the seas of eternity. A battered old wreck Even the rats have abandoned, Its one remaining mast Like a cross on a pauper’s grave I hold on to like a drunk, Counting the little white caps As they chase each ot [...]

I miss you winter evenings With your dim lights. The shut lips of my mother And our held-breaths As we sat at a dining room table. Her long, thin fingers Stacking the cards, Then waiting for them to fall. The sound of boots in the street Making us s [...]

Like a box of old photographs Some of them already ripped in pieces You found on the dump And helped yourself to a few While the wind swept the rest. It was a cold blue autumn evening As you laid them out on the table In the kitchen and found a face [...]

I accused History of gluttony; Happiness of anorexia! History, cruel and mystical, You ate Russia as if it were A pot of white beans cooked with Sausage, smoked ribs and ham hocks! O Happiness, whose every miserly second Is brimming with eter [...]

Of things undescribable! Things unspeakable! The scent of summer night. Rabbit pate made with white Vouvray wine The flutes in the Andes. Tree-tops in purple light. The street was emptying at dusk Like a fading memory with one golden moment. [...]

And again the screech of the scaffold High up there where all our thoughts converge: Lightheaded, hung By a leather strap, Twenty stories up In the chill of November air, Wiping the grime Off the pane, the windows Which have no way of op [...]

Big enough for the five of us To put it on At the same time. Bulky, but we manage Our exit. Mr. Landlord, We only require someone to button it For the funeral, to let it open For the wake. Five hands out of a single sleeve, In each a beer [...]