Charles Simic Poems

In my great grandmother's time,
All one needed was a broom
To get to see places
...

Of the light in my room:
Its mood swings,
Dark-morning glooms,
...

There was a melon fresh from the garden
So ripe the knife slurped
As it cut it into six slices.
The children were going back to school.
...

On the first page of my dreambook
It's always evening
In an occupied country.
Hour before the curfew.
...

Grandma laughing on her deathbed.
Eternity, the quiet one, listening in.

Like moths around an oil lamp we were.
...

They're waiting to be murdered,
Or evicted. Soon
They expect to have nothing to eat.
In the meantime, they sit.
...

They explained to me the bloody bandages
On the floor in the maternity ward in Rochester, N.Y.,
Cured the backache I acquired bowing to my old master,
Made me stop putting thumbtacks round my bed.
...

I grew up bent over
a chessboard.

I loved the word endgame.
...

In his fear of solitude, he made us.
Fearing eternity, he gave us time.
I hear his white cane thumping
Up and down the hall.
...

One day, chasing my tail here and there,
I stopped to catch my breath
On some corner in New York,
While people hurried past me,
...