Category: Charles Simic

Charles Simic

Once I knew, then I forgot. It was as if I had fallen asleep in a field only to discover at waking that a grove of trees had grown up around me. “Doubt nothing, believe everything,” was my friend’s idea of metaphysics, although his brother ran away with his wife. He still bought her a rose every day, sat in the empty house for the next twenty years talking to her about the weather. I was already dozing off in the shade, dreaming that the rustling trees were my many selves explaining themselves all at the same time so that I could not make out a single word. My life was a beautiful mystery on the verge of understanding, always on the verge! Think of it! My friend’s empty house with every one of its windows lit. The dark trees multiplying all around it.

Charles Simic

The ProdigalDark morning rainMeant to fallOn a prison and a schoolyard,Falling meanwhileOn my mother and her old dog.How slow she shuffles nowIn my father’s Sunday shoes.The dog by her sideTrembling with each stepAs he tries to keep up.I am on another corner waitingWith my head shaved.My mind hops like a sparrowIn the rain.I’m always watching and worrying about her.Everything is a magic ritual,A secret cinema,The way she appears in a window hours laterTo set the empty bowlAnd spoon on the table,And then exitsSo that the day may pass,And the night may fallInto the empty bowl,Empty room, empty house,While the rain keepsKnocking at the front door.