The Lunatic

Acknowledgments

These poems were first published in the following magazines, to whose editors grateful acknowledgment is made:
The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Washington Square Review, Slate, The Southern Review, Salmagundi, New Republic, London Review of Books, Esquire, Literary Review,
and
The Paris Review.

Dedication

for Helen

Contents

1. Acknowledgments
   
2. Dedication
   
3. I
   
4. Today’s Menu
   
5. Breeder of Black Cats
   
6. The Lunatic
   
7. O Spring
   
8. About Myself
   
9. Eternities
   
10. Late-Night Inquiry
    
11. Looking for a Soul Mate
    
12. The Dictionary
    
13. The White Labyrinth
    
14. Stories
    
15. In Its Own Sweet Time
    
16. Meet Eddie
    
17. Our Gang
    
18. What the Old Lady Told Me
    
19. New Haircut
    
20. Some Late-Summer Evening
    
21. II
    
22. Let Us Be Careful
    
23. As You Come Over the Hill
    
24. Once December Comes
    
25. Bare Trees
    
26. The Light
    
27. Night Music
    
28. Don’t Name the Chickens
    
29. Pastoral
    
30. As I Was Saying
    
31. Sinbad the Sailor
    
32. The Execution
    
33. Three Cows
    
34. The Missing Hours
    
35. The New Widow
    
36. The Wine
    
37. In My Grandmother’s Time
    
38. Black Butterfly
    
39. III
    
40. The Stray
    
41. On the Brooklyn Bridge
    
42. The Escapee
    
43. Oh, Memory
    
44. The Medium
    
45. Past the Funeral Home
    
46. So Early In the Morning
    
47. The Bamboo Garden
    
48. Wet Matches
    
49. At the Jeweler’s
    
50. Dead Telephone
    
51. Our Playhouse
    
52. Vices of the Evening
    
53. The Feast
    
54. The Executioner’s Daughter
    
55. The Flea
    
56. Autumn Evening
    
57. In This Prison of Ours
    
58. IV
    
59. This Town Is Alright
    
60. Driving Around
    
61. Summer Evening
    
62. That Was Some Night
    
63. Eternities
    
64. The Light
    
65. Memory Train
    
66. The Horse
    
67. With One Glance
    
68. Migrating Birds
    
69. Scribbled in the Dark
    
70. Passing Through
    
71. Dark Night
    
72. Peep Show
    
73. Oh, I Said
    
74. Birds in Winter
    
75. A Quiet Afternoon
    
76. Thus
    
77. About the Author
    
78. Also by Charles Simic
    
79. Credits
    
80. Copyright
    
81. About the Publisher
    

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 to your fingertips?

LOOKING FOR A SOUL MATE

Recovering puff pastry and almond cookie addict,

Formerly associated with a French bakery in SoHo

And one or two choice sewers in the neighborhood

Where he learned a few deep things about life.

Reduced of late to lurking outside cheap eateries,

Concealing his twitching whiskers behind a trash can,

Or fighting with pigeons over a few popcorn,

Now seeks a comfortable brownstone free of cats,

Snap-traps and lip-smacking snacks laced with poison,

Whose wealthy owner gives lavish dinner parties,

And where he’ll be free to mingle with bankers and lawyers

And sit in their wives’ laps like a much-pampered pet.

THE DICTIONARY

Maybe there is a word in it somewhere

To describe the world this morning,

A word for the way the early light

Takes delight in chasing the darkness

Out of store windows and doorways.

Another word for the way it lingers

Over a pair of wire-rimmed glasses

Someone let drop on the sidewalk

Last night and staggered off blindly

Talking to himself or breaking into song.

THE WHITE LABYRINTH

There is one waiting for you,

On every blank sheet of paper.

So, beware of the monster

Guarding it who’ll be invisible

As he comes charging at you,

Armed as you are only with a pen.

And watch out for that girl

Who’ll come to your aid

With her quick mind and a ball of thread,

And lead you by the nose

Out of one maze into another.

STORIES

Because all things write their own stories

No matter how humble

The world is a great big book

Open to a different page,

Depending on the hour of the day,

Where you may read, if you so desire,

The story of a ray of sunlight

In the silence of the afternoon,

How it found a long-lost button

Under some chair in the corner,

A teeny black one that belonged

On the back of her black dress

She once asked you to button,

While you kept kissing her neck

And groped for her breasts.

IN ITS OWN SWEET TIME

That one remaining, barely moving leaf

The wind couldn’t get to fall

All winter long from a bare tree—

That’s me! thinks the old fellow,

The one they roll out in a wheelchair

So that he can watch the children

Play in the park, their mothers

Gossip all day about their neighbors

While pigeons take turns landing

And taking off from a newly arrived hearse

Parked in front of the parish church,