The Lunatic (5 page)
Authors: Charles Simic
As the last leaf falls quiet
And time itself comes to a stop
With its brightly colored circus wagons
Far from any village or town.
Every card in the caravan lying facedown,
Only a horse in a field permitted
To flick his tail and a woman
Sunbathing in the nude to swat a fly.
The long day has ended in which so much
And so little had happened.
Great hopes were dashed,
Then halfheartedly restored once again.
Mirrors became animated and emptied,
Obeying the whims of chance.
The hands of the church clock moved,
At times gently, at times violently.
Night fell. The brain and its mysteries
Deepened. The red neon sign
FIREWORKS FOR SALE
came on a roof
Of a grim old building across the street.
A nearly leafless potted plant
No one ever waters or pays attention to
Cast its shadow on the bedroom wall
With what looked to me like wild joy.
Photo by Beowulf Sheehan
CHARLES SIMIC,
poet, essayist, and translator, was born in Yugoslavia in 1938 and immigrated to the United States in 1954. Since 1967, he has published twenty books of his own poetry, including his most recent collection,
New and Selected Poems
: 1962-2012, in addition to a memoir and numerous books of translations for which he has received many literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award, the Griffin Prize, the MacArthur Fellowship, and the Wallace Stevens Award. Simic is a frequent contributor to the
New York Review of Books
and in 2007 was chosen as poet laureate of the United States. He is emeritus professor of the University of New Hampshire, where he has taught since 1973, and is distinguished visiting writer at New York University.
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What the Grass Says
(1967)
Somewhere among Us a Stone Is Taking Notes
(1969)
Dismantling the Silence
(1971)
Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk
(1974)
Charon’s Cosmology
(1977)
Classic Ballroom Dances
(1980)
Austerities
(1982)
Selected Poems, 1963–1983
(1985)
Unending Blues
(1986)
The World Doesn’t End: Prose Poems
(1989)
The Book of Gods and Devils
(1990)
Hotel Insomnia
(1990)
A Wedding in Hell: Poems
(1994)
Walking the Black Cat: Poems
(1996)
Jackstraws: Poems
(1999)
Night Picnic
(2001)
The Voice at 3:00
A.M.
: Selected Late and New Poems
(2003)
Selected Poems: 1963–2003
(2004)
My Noiseless Entourage: Poems
(2005)
2008: That Little Something: Poems
(2008)
Master of Disguises
(2010)
New and Selected Poems: 1962–2012
(2013)
Cover design by Allison Saltzman
Cover art:
Eternal Introduction,
2008 © by Claire Oswalt
THE LUNATIC.
Copyright © 2015 by Charles Simic. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-236474-6
EPub Edition April 2015 ISBN 9780062364760
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