My Noiseless Entourage: Poems Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  I

  DESCRIPTION OF A LOST THING

  SHADING EXERCISE

  SELF-PORTRAIT IN BED

  TO DREAMS

  THE GAMBLERS UPSTAIRS

  CALAMITY CRIER

  THE ALARM

  MY NOISELESS ENTOURAGE

  FABULOUS SPECIES AND LANDSCAPES

  USED CLOTHING STORE

  THE CENTURIES

  VOYAGE TO CYTHERA

  II

  USED BOOK STORE

  HITCHHIKERS

  GRAVEYARD ON A HILL

  THE WORLD RUNS ON FUTILITY

  BATTLING GRAYS

  SUNLIGHT

  THE BIRDIE

  MINDS ROAMING

  COCKROACH SALON

  MIDNIGHT FEAST

  ONE CHAIR

  INSOMNIA'S CRICKET

  TALK RADIO

  III

  MY TURN TO CONFESS

  THE HERMETICAL AND ALCHEMICAL WRITINGS OF PARACELSUS

  ON THE FARM

  I SEE LOTS OF STICKS ON THE GROUND

  EVERYBODY HAD LOST TRACK OF TIME

  BRETHREN

  ASK YOUR ASTROLOGER

  KAZOO WEDDING

  SNOWY MORNING BLUES

  TO FATE

  SLURRED WORDS

  MEETING THE CAPTAIN

  SWEETEST

  LEAVES AT NIGHT

  IV

  STARLINGS IN A TREE AT DUSK

  THE HEADLINE

  THE TRAGIC SENSE OF LIFE

  THE ROLE OF INSOMNIA IN HISTORY

  IN THE PLANETARIUM

  IN THE MORNING HALF-AWAKE

  THE ABSENTEE LANDLORD

  HE HEARD WITH HIS DEAD EAR

  DECEMBER 21

  MY WIFE LIFTS A FINGER TO HER LIPS

  OUR OLD NEIGHBOR

  PIGEONS AT DAWN

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright © 2005 by Charles Simic

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

  transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and

  retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work

  should be mailed to the following address: Permissions Department,

  Harcourt, Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

  www.HarcourtBooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Simic, Charles, 1938-

  My noiseless entourage: poems/Charles Simic.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  I. Title.

  PS3569.I4725M9 2005

  811'.54—dc22 2004025586

  ISBN 0-15-101214-8

  Text set in Dante MT

  Designed by Liz Demeter

  Printed in the United States of America

  First edition

  C E G I K J H F D

  To Helen

  I

  DESCRIPTION OF A LOST THING

  It never had a name,

  Nor do I remember how I found it.

  I carried it in my pocket

  Like a lost button

  Except it wasn't a button.

  Horror movies,

  All-night cafeterias,

  Dark barrooms

  And poolhalls,

  On rain-slicked streets.

  It led a quiet, unremarkable existence

  Like a shadow in a dream,

  An angel on a pin,

  And then it vanished.

  The years passed with their row

  Of nameless stations,

  Till somebody told me this is it!

  And fool that I was,

  I got off on an empty platform

  With no town in sight.

  SHADING EXERCISE

  This street could use a bit of shade

  And the same goes for that small boy

  Playing alone in the sun,

  A shadow to dart after him like a black kitten.

  His parents sit in a room with shades drawn.

  The stairs to the cellar

  Are hardly used any more

  Except for an occasional prowler.

  Like a troop of traveling actors dressed to play Hamlet,

  The evening shadows come.

  They spend their days hidden in the trees

  Outside the old courthouse.

  Now comes the hard part:

  What to do with the stones in the graveyard?

  The sun doesn't care for ambiguities,

  But I do. I open my door and let them in.

  SELF-PORTRAIT IN BED

  For imaginary visitors, I had a chair

  Made of cane I found in the trash.

  There was a hole where its seat was

  And its legs were wobbly

  But it still gave a dignified appearance.

  I myself never sat in it, though

  With the help of a pillow one could do that

  Carefully, with knees drawn together

  The way she did once,

  Leaning back to laugh at her discomfort.

  The lamp on the night table

  Did what it could to bestow

  An air of mystery to the room.

  There was a mirror, too, that made

  Everything waver as in a fishbowl

  If I happened to look that way,

  Red-nosed, about to sneeze,

  With a thick wool cap pulled over my ears,

  Reading some Russian in bed,

  Worrying about my soul, I'm sure.

  TO DREAMS

  I'm still living at all the old addresses,

  Wearing dark glasses even indoors,

  On the hush-hush sharing my bed

  With phantoms, visiting the kitchen

  After midnight to check the faucet.

  I'm late for school, and when I get there

  No one seems to recognize me.

  I sit disowned, sequestered and withdrawn.

  These small shops open only at night

  Where I make my unobtrusive purchases,

  These back-door movie houses in seedy neighborhoods

  Still showing grainy films of my life.

  The hero always full of extravagant hope

  Losing it all in the end?—whatever it was—

  Then walking out into the cold, disbelieving light

  Waiting close-lipped at the exit.

  THE GAMBLERS UPSTAIRS

  That faint rattle of dice rolling

  Late at night

  No one else hears—

  They are wagering over me, placing bets,

  The high rollers and their sidekicks

  On their knees.

  Little Joe from Baltimore,

  Ada from Decatur.

  The noise of bones,

  The hush after each roll

  Keeping me awake—

  God's throw or devil's?

  My love holding her hands over my eyes

  As we inch toward the stairs

  Stripped down to our underwear

  And liable to slip and break our necks.

  CALAMITY CRIER

  Of this much you can be sure:

  Shadow lengthening among shadows

  Of other hurried pedestrians,

  The more innocent you believe you are,

  The harder it'll be for you.

  In this store window full of musical instruments,

  I could not make out their faces

  Nor could they make
out mine.

  Golden trumpets accustomed to blowing dust,

  I thought, and turned my back with a shudder.

  What a grand parade of phantoms—

  Or were they mourners?

  Carrying signs made illegible by the darkness

  And the sun going down

  Setting the pawnshops on fire.

  THE ALARM

  The hundreds of windows filling with faces

  Because of something that happened on the street,

  Something no one is able to explain,

  Because there was no fire engine, no scream, no gunshot.

  And yet here they all are assembled.

  Some with hands over their children's eyes,

  Others leaning out and shouting

  To people walking the streets far below

  With the same composure and serene appearance

  Of those going for a Sunday stroll

  In some other century, less violent than ours.

  MY NOISELESS ENTOURAGE

  We were never formally introduced.

  I had no idea of their number.

  It was like a discreet entourage

  Of homegrown angels and demons

  All of whom I had met before

  And had since largely forgotten.

  In time of danger, they made themselves scarce.

  Where did they all vanish to?

  I asked some felon one night

  While he held a knife to my throat,

  But he was spooked too,

  Letting me go without a word.

  It was disconcerting, downright frightening

  To be reminded of one's solitude,

  Like opening a children's book—

  With nothing better to do—reading about stars,

  How they can afford to spend centuries

  Traveling our way on a glint of light.

  FABULOUS SPECIES AND LANDSCAPES

  That chill breath you felt

  On your neck,

  That long arm

  Out of undertaker's basement,

  It snatched your watch.

  You saw its feathers fly,

  Wings darken,

  Or were they rat's whiskers?

  You even saw your ears disappear

  In its pocket.

  Churchwarden's ears

  Pinched raw with cold.

  ***

  Dustball alchemists

  Under the bed,

  Cobweb wigmakers,

  Mirrors never looked at.

  A tongue by itself

  In a birdcage

  Covered with a blue work shirt

  For the night, asking:

  How many minutes

  In a glass of water

  By the bedside?

  How many slow sips?

  ***

  Blood too which flows

  Like a stream

  In the woods

  While you sleep.

  You're a leaf floating

  In its rushes,

  You are the white foam

  And the cataract,

  A river that doesn't know its name

  And the sea at night

  Like a trinket peddler setting up its stall,

  And the moon a pork butcher.

  ***

  The belly hobbles

  In wooden clogs

  Using a knife and fork

  As crutches

  While you sit

  Like a rain puddle in hell

  Knitting the socks

  Of your life.

  The world dreams of you

  Buttoned up to the chin

  Turning on a spit

  With an apple in your mouth.

  USED CLOTHING STORE

  A large stock of past lives

  To rummage through

  For the one that fits you

  Cleaned and newly pressed,

  Yet frayed at the collar.

  A dummy dressed in black

  Is at the door to serve you.

  His eyes won't let you go.

  His mustache looks drawn

  With a tip of a dead cigar.

  Towers of pants are tilting,

  As you turn to flee,

  Dead men's hats are rolling

  On the floor, hurrying

  To escort you out the door.

  THE CENTURIES

  Many a poor wretch left no trace

  Of ever having lived here.

  This punch bowl made of silver

  Belonged to a house with turrets.

  It's still standing—though the rose garden

  And the birch trees are long gone.

  The stone walls deep in the woods

  Tell another story, how everything

  Foretold in dreams came to pass:

  The young woman huddled on her bed

  Naked and trembling with cold

  Still wearing the veil she wore in church.

  The small girls admiring watch faces

  In the window of a jewelry store

  Cannot yet tell time—and neither can I.

  Come spring, our roads are muddy.

  The news of the outside world arrives

  More quickly but still finds us mystified.

  VOYAGE TO CYTHERA

  I'll go to the island of Cythera

  On foot, of course,

  I'll set out some May evening,

  Light as a feather,

  There where the goddess is fabled to have risen

  Naked from the sea—

  I'll jump over a park fence

  Right where the lilacs are blooming

  And the trees are feverish with new leaves.

  The swing I saw in a painting once

  Is surely here somewhere?

  And so is the one in a long white dress,

  With eyes blindfolded

  Who gropes her way down a winding path

  Among her masked companions

  Wearing black capes and carrying daggers.

  This is all a dream, fellows,

  I'll say after they empty my pockets.

  And so are you, my love,

  Carrying a Chinese lantern

  And running off with my wallet

  In the descending darkness.

  II

  USED BOOK STORE

  Lovers hold hands in never-opened novels.

  The page with a recipe for cucumber soup is missing.

  A dead man writes of his happy childhood on a farm,

  Of riding in a balloon over Lake Erie.

  A sudden draft shuts his book in my hand,

  While a philosopher asks how is it possible

  To maintain the theologically orthodox doctrine

  Of eternal punishment of the damned?

  Let's see. There may be sand among the pages

  Of a travel guide to Egypt or even a dead flea

  That once bit the ass of the mysterious Abigail

  Who scribbled her name teasingly with an eye pencil.

  HITCHHIKERS

  after a Walker Evans photograph from the thirties

  Hard times brought them out early

  On this dreary stretch of road

  Carrying a suitcase and a bedroll

  With a frying pan tied to it,

  The kind you use over a campfire

  When a moss-covered log is your pillow.

  He's hopeful and she's ashamed

  To be asking a stranger to take them

  Away from here in a cloud of flying

  Gravel and dust, past leafless trees

  With their snarled and pointy little twigs.

  A man and a woman catching a ride

  To where water tastes like cherry wine.

  She'll work as a maid or a waitress,

  He'll pump gas or rob banks.

  They'll buy a car as big as a hearse

  To make their fast getaway,

  Not forgetting to stop for you, mister,

  If you are down on your luck you
rself.

  GRAVEYARD ON A HILL

  Let those who so desire continue to dream

  Of heavenly mansions

  With their vast chambers and balconies

  Awash in the light of a golden afternoon.

  I'll take this January wind, so mean

  It permits no other thought

  Than the one that acknowledges its presence

  Among these weedy tombstones

  And these trees out of a vampire flick

  Bending to the breaking point

  And then straightening up—intact,

  With the wind busy elsewhere,

  Nudging dead leaves to take a few quick hops

  Right up to the branch they fell from.

  THE WORLD RUNS ON FUTILITY

  Sea waves destined to repeat themselves,

  Forever stammering excuses

  To the gulls lining up your shores.

  Or you, gusting wind, troubling these pines

  With your wild oratory.

  Even you, coming darkness,

  And you tumbleweeds rolling over,

  Through a ghost town

  With the bug that lives one day

  On a torn window screen

  And a sky full of white clouds.