Kindled.

It so many fires in my imagination were kindled inside this glorious building ...

IN the LIBRARY 

There’s a book called

A Dictionary of Angels.

No one had opened it in fifty years,

I know, because when I did,

The covers creaked, the pages

Crumbled. There I discovered

The angels were once as plentiful

As species of flies.

The sky at dusk

Used to be thick with them.

You had to wave both arms

Just to keep them away.

Now the sun is shining

Through the tall windows.

The library is a quiet place.

Angels and gods huddled

In dark unopened books.

The great secret lies

On some shelf Miss Jones

Passes every day on her rounds.

She’s very tall, so she keeps

Her head tipped as if listening.

The books are whispering.

I hear nothing, but she does.

Charles Simic

Lost.

EVENING WALK

You give the appearance of listening

To my thoughts, o trees,

Bent over the road I am walking

On a late summer evening

When every one of you is a steep staircase

The night is descending.

 

The leaves like my my mother’s lips

Forever trembling, unable to decide,

Fore there’s a bit of wind,

And it’s like hearing voices,

Or a mouth full of muffled laughter,

A huge dark mouth we can all fit in

Suddenly covered by a hand.

 

Everything quiet. Light

Of some other evening strolling ahead,

Long-ago evening of long dresses,

Pointy shoes, silver cigarettes cases.

Happy heart, what heavy steps you take

As you hurry after them in the thickening

shadows.

 

The sky above still blue.

The nightbirds like children

Who won’t come to dinner.

Lost children singing to themselves.

Charles Simic

Out.

A dog trying to write a poem on why he barks,

That’s me, dear reader!

They were about to kick me out of the library

But I warned them,

My master is invisible and all-powerful.

Still, they kept dragging me out by the tail.

In the park the birds spoke freely of their own vexations.

On the bench, I saw an old woman

Cutting her white curly hair with imaginary scissors

While staring into a small pocket mirror.

I didn’t say anything then,

But that night I lay slumped on the floor,

Chewing on a pencil,

Sighing from time to time,

Growling, too, at something out there

I could not bring myself to name.

Charles Simic

Whispering.

Brown, The Scholar in the Library, Rainy Winter's Day, n/d

IN the LIBRARY

There’s a book called

A Dictionary of Angels.

No one had opened it in fifty years,

I know, because when I did,

The covers creaked, the pages

Crumbled. There I discovered

The angels were once as plentiful

As species of flies.

The sky at dusk

Used to be thick with them.

You had to wave both arms

Just to keep them away.

Now the sun is shining

Through the tall windows.

The library is a quiet place.

Angels and gods huddled

In dark unopened books.

The great secret lies

On some shelf Miss Jones

Passes every day on her rounds.

She’s very tall, so she keeps

Her head tipped as if listening.

The books are whispering.

I hear nothing, but she does.

Charles Simic

Understood.

The CLOCKS of the DEAD

One night I went to keep the clock company.

It had a loud tick after midnight

As if it were uncommonly afraid.

It's like whistling past a graveyard,

I explained.

In any case, I told him I understood.

Once there were clocks like that

In every kitchen in America.

Now the factory's windows are all broken.

The old men on night shift are in Charon's boat

The day you stop, I said to the clock,

The little wheels they keep in reserve

Will have rolled away

Into many hard-to-find places.

Just thinking about it,

I forgot to wind the clock.

We woke up in the dark.

How quiet the city is, I said.

Like the clocks of the dead, my wife replied.

Grandmother on the wall,

I heard the snows of your childhood

Begin to fall.

Charles Simic

Inside.

STONE

Go inside a stone

That would be my way.

Let somebody else become a dove

Or gnash with a tiger's tooth.

I am happy to be a stone

From the outside the stone is a riddle:

No one knows how to answer it.

Yet within, it must be cool and quiet

Even though a cow steps on it full weight,

Even though a child throws it in the river;

The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed

To the river bottom

Where the fishes come to knock on it

And listen.

I have seen sparks fly out

When two stones are rubbed,

So perhaps it is not dark inside after all;

Perhaps there is a moon shining

From somewhere, as though behind a hill -

Just enough light to make out

The strange writings, the star-charts
On the inner walls.

Charles Simic