The butchery of the innocent
Never stops. That’s about all
We can be ever sure of, love,
Even more sure than the roast
You are bringing out the oven.
It’s Sunday. The congregation
Files slowly out of the church
Across the street. A good many
Carry Bibles in their hands.
It’s the vague desire for truth
And the mighty fear of it
That makes them turn up
Despite the glorious spring weather.
In the hallway, the old mutt
Just now had the honesty
To growl at his own image in the mirror,
Before lumbering to the kitchen
Where the lamb roast sat
In your outstretched hands
Smelling of garlic and rosemary.
www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/entertainment/poetry/profiles/poet_simic.html
Charles Simic
The time of minor poets is coming. Good-by
Whitman, Dickinson, Frost. Welcome you whose
fame will never reach beyond your closest family,
and perhaps one or two good friends gathered after
dinner over a jug of fierce red wine . . . while the
children are falling asleep and complaining about
the noise you’re making as you rummage through
the closets for your old poems, afraid your wife
might’ve thrown them out with last spring’s cleaning.
It’s snowing, says someone who has peeked
into the dark night, and then he, too, turns towards
you as you prepare yourself to read, in a manner
somewhat theatrical and with a face turning red,
the long rambling love poem whose final stanza
(unknown to you) is hopelessly missing.
—After Aleksandar Ristovic’
Charles Simic, The World Doesn’t End: Prose Poems, p.58
Charles Simic
In the fine print of her face
Her eyes are two loopholes
No, let me start again.
Her eyes are flies in milk,
Her eyes are baby Draculas.
To hell with her eyes.
Let me tell you about her mouth.
Her mouth’s the red cottage
Where the wolf ate grandma.
Ah, forget about her mouth,
Let me talk of her breasts.
I get a peek at them now and then
And even that ‘s more than enough
To make me lose my head,
So I better tell you about her legs.
When she crosses them on the sofa
It’s like the jailer unwrapping a parcel
And in that parcel is a Christmas cake
And in that cake a sweet little file
That gasps her name as it files my chains.
Selected Early Poems, 1999, p. 205
Charles Simic