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.
...

You give the appearance of listening
To my thoughts, O trees,
Bent over the road I am walking
On a late-summer evening
...

The softness of this motel bed
On which we made love
Demonstrates to me in an impressive manner
The superiority of capitalism.
...

My beloved, you who spend your nights
Torturing me
By holding up one mirror after another
To me in the dark,
...

Little brook, running past my house,
I like the tune you hum to yourself
When night comes,
And only the two of us are awake.
...

It pains me to see an old woman fret over
A few small coins outside a grocery store -
How swiftly I forget her as my own grief
Finds me again - a friend at death's door
...

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.
...