Scribbled in the Dark Read online

  DEDICATION

  FOR HELEN

  EPIGRAPH

  It’s not as though I had a cow to milk,

  or do I?

  —James Tate

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  EPIGRAPH

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I DARK NIGHT’S FLY CATCHER

  SEEING THINGS

  AT THE VACANCY SIGN

  THAT ELUSIVE SOMETHING

  FAIR-WEATHER FRIENDS

  UNINVITED GUEST

  ALL GONE INTO THE DARK

  THE WEEK

  TO BOREDOM

  FISH OUT OF WATER

  ILLEGIBLE SCRIBBLE

  HISTORY

  SIGNS OF THE TIMES

  IN THE COURTROOM

  MISSED CHANCE

  II JANUARY

  IN WONDER

  IN THE SNOW

  ANCIENT COMBATANT

  THE NIGHT AND THE COLD

  ALL THINGS IN PRECIPITOUS DECLINE

  THE CRICKET ON MY PILLOW

  WINTER FLY

  BARE TREES

  ROADHOUSE

  STRAY HEN

  THE WHITE CAT

  THE ONE WHO DISAPPEARED

  THE MESSAGE

  BIRDS KNOW

  III THE MOVIE

  BELLADONNA

  ON CLOUD NINE

  SWEPT AWAY

  MY GODDESS

  THE LUCKY COUPLE

  DEAD SURE

  THE LOVER

  THE SAINT

  THE ART OF HAPPINESS

  IN SOMEONE’S BACKYARD

  CHERRY PIE

  A DAY CAME

  HAUNTED HOUSE

  THE BLIZZARD

  IV THE INFINITE

  LAST BET FOR THE NIGHT

  DESCRIPTION

  MYSTERY THEATER

  SHADOW ON THE WALL

  LOOKING FOR A PLACE TO HIDE

  SCRIBBLED IN THE DARK

  IN THE GREEK CHURCH

  THE MASQUE

  MANY A HOLY MAN

  THE LIFEBOAT

  PAST THE CEMETARY

  STAR ATLAS

  NIGHT OWLS

  AT TENDER MERCY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO BY CHARLES SIMIC

  CREDITS

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  These poems were first published in the following magazines, to whose editors grateful acknowledgment is made: The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, Boulevard, London Review of Books, Tin House, The Nation, Boston Review, Monkey Business, The Threepenny Review, A Public Space, and the New York Times Magazine.

  I

  DARK NIGHT’S FLY CATCHER

  Thatched myself

  Over with words.

  Night after night

  Thatched myself

  Anew against

  The pending eraser.

  SEEING THINGS

  I came here in my youth,

  A wind toy on a string.

  Saw a street in hell and one in paradise.

  Saw a room with a light in it so ailing

  It could’ve been leaning on a cane.

  Saw an old man in a tailor shop

  Kneel before a bride with pins between his lips.

  Saw the President swear on the Bible

  while snow fell around him.

  Saw a pair of lovers kiss in an empty church

  And a naked man run out of a building

  waving a gun and sobbing.

  Saw kids wearing Halloween masks

  Jump from one roof to another at sunset.

  Saw a van full of stray dogs look back at me.

  Saw a homeless woman berating God

  And a blind man with a guitar singing:

  “Oh Lord remember me,

  When these chains are broken set my body free.”

  AT THE VACANCY SIGN

  There was a small room in the back

  With a bed and a chair,

  And a grim old woman

  Who unlocked the door

  And made herself scarce,

  Leaving you there alone

  With a thin ray of sunlight

  You could imagine talking to

  Every time it dropped in for a visit,

  And falling quiet

  As it got ready to leave.

  THAT ELUSIVE SOMETHING

  Was it in the smell of freshly baked bread

  That came to greet you out of the bakery?

  The sight of two girls playing with dolls

  On the steps of a building blackened by fire?

  In this city you might’ve seen once

  In a dream or knew in another life,

  This street calm as a sharpshooter

  Taking his aim in the bright sunlight,

  Perhaps at that woman turning a corner,

  Pushing a baby carriage ahead of her,

  You ran after, as if the child in it was you,

  And found yourself lost afterwards

  In a crowd of strangers, feeling like someone

  Stepping out after a long illness

  Who can’t help but see the world with his heart

  And hopes not to forget what he saw.

  FAIR-WEATHER FRIENDS

  Eddie with flowing locks, plus Joey and me,

  Like Jesus and two thieves

  Crucified side by side on the blackboard,

  Our backs slumped in defeat

  While awaiting our punishment.

  The Lord took pity on them, wiped

  Their souls clean with a sponge.

  Not mine. I remained where I was

  Holding on to a piece of chalk

  Long after they had all gone home.

  Night already fallen everywhere,

  Hard to be sure what numbers

  Still remain there to be added

  Or subtracted or whether someone

  Is watching as I give them a last try.

  UNINVITED GUEST

  Dark thought on a sunny day

  Languid miss in distress

  Everyone’s blind date

  With a look of having a secret

  Knife drawer in a madman’s kitchen

  A crow flying round my head

  Suicide’s friend

  Soft-footed gravedigger of our hopes

  Hell’s night nurse

  Bending over a cradle.

  ALL GONE INTO THE DARK

  Where’s that blind street preacher who said

  The world will end Thursday at noon?

  Or that woman who walked down Madison

  Stark naked and holding her head high?

  Where’s the poet Delmore Schwartz

  Arguing with a ghost on a park bench?

  Where’s the drunk young man on crutches

  Wanting to kill more Vietnamese?

  Mr. Undertaker, savoring a buttered roll

  In a window of a coffee shop, you ought to know—

  Or are you, like the rest of us, in the dark

  As you make ready to bury another stiff?

  THE WEEK

  Monday comes around with a new tattoo

  It won’t show us and here’s Tuesday

  Walking its latest nightmare on a leash

  And Wednesday blind as the rain tapping

  On a windowpane and Thursday sipping

  Bad coffee served by a pretty waitress

  And Friday lost in a confusion of sad

  And happy faces and Saturday flashing

  Like a pinball machine in the morgue

  And Sunday with a head of crucified Christ

  Hanging sideways in a bathroom mirror

  TO BORED
OM

  I’m the child of rainy Sundays.

  I watched time crawl

  Like an injured fly

  Over the wet windowpane.

  Or waited for a branch

  On a tree to stop shaking,

  While Grandmother knitted

  Making a ball of yarn

  Roll over like a kitten at her feet.

  I knew every clock in the house

  Had stopped ticking

  And that this day will last forever.

  FISH OUT OF WATER

  That’s what you always were, my friend.

  Just the other day

  A stuffed parrot perched

  In splendor of an antiques store,

  Gave you a dirty look

  As you stuck your nose in.

  Like running into a mirror

  One night crossing a vast

  And empty shopping mall

  With an odd-looking stranger

  Cooling his heels in it

  Surprised to find you there.

  Or driving past a scarecrow

  Someone relocated

  To a graveyard near your home

  And hearing his laughter

  Long after you went back the next day

  And found him gone.

  ILLEGIBLE SCRIBBLE

  These rags the spirit borrows

  To clothe itself

  Against the chill of mortality.

  O barbed wire of crossed-out words,

  Crown of thorns,

  Camp meeting of dead wall reveries,

  Spilled worry beads,

  Fortune-teller’s coffee dregs,

  My footholds in the abyss.

  HISTORY

  Our life stories are scary and droll,

  Like masks children wear on Halloween

  As they go from door to door

  Holding the little ones by the hand

  In some neighborhood long torn down,

  Where people ate their dinners

  In angry silence or quarreling loudly,

  When there was a knock on the door,

  A soft knock a shy boy makes

  Dressed in a costume his mother made.

  What’s this you’re wearing, kid?

  And where did you get that mask?

  That made everyone laugh here

  While you stood staring at us,

  As if you knew already we were history.

  SIGNS OF THE TIMES

  For a mind full of disquiet

  A trembling roadside weed is Cassandra,

  And so is the sight

  Of a boarded up public library,

  The rows of books beyond its windows

  Unopened for years,

  The sickly old dog on its steps,

  And a man slumped next to him,

  His mouth working mutely

  Like an actor unable to recall his lines

  At the end of some tragic farce.

  IN THE COURTROOM

  The judge appears to be asleep:

  His heavy eyelids are lowered

  And his black glasses rest

  On a thick stack of documents.

  Take your shoes off as you enter,

  So as not to disturb his rest,

  But keep your white socks on.

  The floor of the courtroom is cold.

  What’s left of the fading daylight

  Is about to make its quiet exit,

  Leaving the darkness in our souls

  To do what it damn pleases here.

  MISSED CHANCE

  One afternoon looking for a shortcut,

  I found myself on a street

  That I’d never known was there,

  And might’ve gone no further—

  With my foot arrested in midstride

  Before a dogwood tree in flower,

  Towering in someone’s yard

  And a few brightly colored toys

  Scattered along their driveway,

  But no child or anyone else in sight.

  One caged bird chirping in a window

  Who may’ve been in on the secret?

  I didn’t wait to find out, but hurried away

  Wherever it seemed more important

  For me to show my face that day.

  II

  JANUARY

  Children’s fingerprints

  On a frozen window

  Of a small schoolhouse.

  An empire, I read somewhere,

  Maintains itself through

  The cruelty of its prisons.

  IN WONDER

  I cursed someone or something

  Tossing and turning all night—

  Or so I was told, though I had no memory

  Who it could be, so I stared

  At the world out there in wonder.

  The frost lay pretty on the bushes

  Like tinsel over a Christmas tree,

  When a limo as long as a hearse

  Crept into view stopping at each

  Mailbox as if in search of a name,

  And not finding it sped away,

  Its tires squealing like a piglet

  Lifted into the air by a butcher.

  IN THE SNOW

  Tracks of someone lost,

  Bleakly preoccupied,

  Meandering blindly

  In these here woods,

  Licking his wounds

  And crunching the snow,

  As he trudges on,

  Bereft and baffled,

  In mounting terror

  With no way out,

  Jinxed at every turn,

  A mystery to himself.

  ANCIENT COMBATANT

  Veteran of foreign wars,

  Stiff in arm and leg,

  His baggy pants billowing in the wind

  Salutes a crow in a tree,

  And resumes his stroll

  Past a small graveyard,

  Swerving and waving his arms

  As if besieged by ghosts

  Lurking among headstones,

  Waiting to accost him

  And make a clean breast

  Before he slips out of sight.

  The tiger lilies bemused.

  The curving dirt road in his wake

  Deep in silence

  And prey to lengthening shadows.

  THE NIGHT AND THE COLD

  Torturers with happy faces,

  You’ve made a prisoner strip naked

  And stand strung with electric wires

  Like a Christmas tree

  In a department store window

  Next to a smiling family gathered

  Around a fake brick fireplace.

  And as for you, men and women

  Sprawled in dark doorways,

  Along this street I’m walking,

  Stuff your clothes with more newspaper,

  The night will be long and cold.

  ALL THINGS IN PRECIPITOUS DECLINE

  Like a pickup with its wheels gone,

  And some rusty and disassembled

  Antique stoves and refrigerators

  In a front yard choked with weeds,

  Outside a shack with a plastic sheet

  Draped over one of its windows,

  Where a beer bottle went through

  One star-studded night in June—

  Or was it a shotgun we heard?

  The police inquiry, if there is one,

  Is proceeding at a snail’s pace,

  In the meantime, the old recluse

  Got himself a bad-tempered mutt

  To keep his junk company and bark

  At all comers, including the mailman

  Leaving a rare letter in the mailbox.

  THE CRICKET ON MY PILLOW

  His emaciated head and legs

  Speak of long fasts, frantic prayers,

  Dark nights of the soul,

  And other unknown torments,

  Before he found refuge in our home

  From that madman out there

  Who t
hrew over his bed

  A heavy blanket of snow.

  WINTER FLY

  You ought to live in a palace like a king

  And not shiver on my kitchen wall,

  Have a bed and chair made to measure

  And a radio playing the latest hits

  The flies in Dakar and Rio are humming,

  While servants serve you pastries

  On plates bearing your coat of arms,

  And your courtiers look to catch you

  A lady companion from among the flies

  Grooming themselves on a dead dog.

  BARE TREES

  They are fans of horror film

  In the fading light of a November day,

  The gray surface of the pond

  Is a movie screen they are watching.

  The bare branches moving in it,

  Are like the fingers of the blind

  Reaching to touch the face of someone

  Who’d been calling out to them

  In the voice of geese flying over,

  The shots of a hunting rifle,

  And a dog barking outside a trailer

  For someone to hurry and let him in.

  ROADHOUSE

  The news of the world is always old.

  Nothing new ever happens,

  The innocent get slaughtered

  While some guy on TV makes excuses,

  And the bartender refills our drinks,

  His left hand clasped behind

  His arching back, either maimed

  By a dog or wielding a blackjack.

  Our wars, it seems, are not going well.

  A senator got caught soliciting sex

  In a public bathroom at an airport,

  And rain and snow are on the way.

  STRAY HEN

  The hounds of hell are barking again,

  Better look for a tree to climb,

  Befriend a rat slipping into a sewer,

  The kite someone set free in the sky.

  The watermelons we saw last summer

  Falling out of a truck and breaking