Charles Simic

1 The brightly-painted horse Had a boy’s face, And four small wheels Under his feet, Plus a long string To pull him by this way and that Across the floor, Should you care to. A string in-waiting That slipped away In many wiles From each and every try. 2 Knock and they’ll answer, Mother told me. So I climbed four flights of stairs And went in unannounced. And found a small wooden toy For the taking In the ensuing emptiness And the fading daylight That still gives me a shudder As if I held the key to mysteries in my hand. 3 Where’s the Lost and Found Department, And the quiet entry, The undeveloped film Of the few clear moments Of our blurred lives? Where’s the drop of blood And the teeny nail That pricked my finger As I bent down to touch the toy And caught its eye? 4 Evening light, Make me a Sunday Go-to meeting shadow For my toy. My dearest memories are Steep stair-wells In dusty buildings On dead-end streets, Where I talk to the walls And closed doors As if they understood me. 5 The wooden toy sitting pretty. No, quieter than that. Like the sound of eyebrows Raised by a villain In a silent movie. Psst, someone said behind my back.

The obvious is difficult To prove. Many prefer The hidden. I did, too. I listened to the trees. They had a secret Which they were about to Make known to me, And then didn’t. Summer came. Each tree On my street had its own Scheherazade. My nights Were a part of their wild Storytelling. We were Entering dark houses, More and more dark houses Hushed and abandoned. There was someone with eyes closed On the upper floors. The thought of it, and the wonder, Kept me sleepless. The truth is bald and cold, Said the woman Who always wore white. She didn’t leave her room much. The sun pointed to one or two Things that had survived The long night intact, The simplest things, Difficult in their obviousness. They made no noise. It was the kind of day People describe as “perfect.” Gods disguising themselves As black hairpins? A hand-mirror? A comb with a tooth missing? No! That wasn’t it. Just things as they are, Unblinking, lying mute In that bright light, And the trees waiting for the night.

A small wheel Incandescent, Shivering like A pinned butterfly. Hands thrown up In all directions: The crossroads One arrives at In a nightmare. Higher than that Number 12 presides Like a beekeeper Over the swarming honeycomb Of the open watch. Other wheels That could fit Inside a raindrop. Tools That must be splinters Of arctic starlight. Tiny golden mills Grinding invisible Coffee beans. When the coffee’s boiling Cautiously, So it doesn’t burn us, We raise it To the lips Of the nearest Ear.

It hangs from heaven to earth. There are trees in it, cities, rivers, small pigs and moons. In one corner the snow falling over a charging cavalry, in another women are planting rice. You can also see: a chicken carried off by a fox, a naked couple on their wedding night, a column of smoke, an evil-eyed woman spitting into a pail of milk. What is behind it? —Space, plenty of empty space. And who is talking now? —A man asleep under his hat. What happens when he wakes up? —He’ll go into a barbershop. They’ll shave his beard, nose, ears, and hair, To make him look like everyone else.

One day, chasing my tail here and there, I stopped to catch my breath On some corner in New York, While people hurried past me, All determined to get somewhere, Save a few adrift like lost children. What ever became of my youth? I wanted to stop a stranger and ask. "It went into hiding," said an old woman Who'd read my mind. "Swimming with sharks," a drunk concurred, Fixing me with one bloody eye. It was summer, and then as quietly as  a bird lands, The sidewalks were dusted with snow And I was shivering without a coat. I had hopes we'd meet again, I told myself, Have a drink and recall the nights When we used to paint this town red. I thought you'd be in a straightjacket by now, You'd say to me, Making funny faces at doctors and nurses. Instead, here you are full of fleas, Dodging cars and buses To follow a pair of good-looking legs home. "And you, Judas," I summed the strength to shout, "Will you be coming to my funeral?" But he was gone already. It had gotten late in the day, Very late—and since there was nothing That could be done about it— I thought I'd better toddle along myself.

In his fear of solitude, he made us. Fearing eternity, he gave us time. I hear his white cane thumping Up and down the hall. I expect neighbors to complain, but no. The little girl who sobbed When her daddy crawled into her bed Is quiet now. It's quarter to two. On this street of darkened pawnshops, Welfare hotels and tenements, One or two ragged puppets are awake.

I grew up bent over a chessboard. I loved the word endgame. All my cousins looked worried. It was a small house near a Roman graveyard. Planes and tanks shook its windowpanes. A retired professor of astronomy taught me how to play. That must have been in 1944. In the set we were using, the paint had almost chipped off the black pieces. The white King was missing and had to be substituted for. I’m told but do not believe that that summer I witnessed men hung from telephone poles. I remember my mother blindfolding me a lot. She had a way of tucking my head suddenly under her overcoat. In chess, too, the professor told me, the masters play blindfolded, the great ones on several boards at the same time.

They explained to me the bloody bandages On the floor in the maternity ward in Rochester, N.Y., Cured the backache I acquired bowing to my old master, Made me stop putting thumbtacks round my bed. They showed me an officer on horseback, Waving a saber next to a burning farmhouse And a barefoot woman in a nightgown, Throwing stones after him and calling him Lucifer. I was a straw-headed boy in patched overalls. Come dark a chicken would roost in my hair. Some even laid eggs as I played my ukulele And my mother and father crossed themselves. Next, I saw myself inside an abandoned gas station Constructing a spaceship out of a coffin, Red traffic cone, cement mixer and ear warmers, When a church lady fainted seeing me in my underwear. Some days, however, they opened door after door, Always to a different room, and could not find me. There’d be only a small squeak now and then, As if a miner’s canary got caught in a mousetrap.

They’re waiting to be murdered, Or evicted. Soon They expect to have nothing to eat. In the meantime, they sit. A violent pain is coming, they think. It will start in the heart And climb into the mouth. They’ll be carried off in stretchers, howling. Tonight they watch the window Without exchanging a word. It has rained, and now it looks Like it’s going to snow a little. I see him get up to lower the shades. If their window stays dark, I know his hand has reached hers Just as she was about to turn on the lights.

Grandma laughing on her deathbed. Eternity, the quiet one, listening in. Like moths around an oil lamp we were. Like ragdolls tucked away in the attic. In walked a cat with a mouthful of feathers. (How about that?) A dark little country store full of gravedigger’s children buying candy. (That’s how we looked that night.) The young men pumping gas spoke of his friends: the clouds. It was such a sad story, it made everyone laugh. A bird called out of a tree, but received no answer. The beauty of that last moment Like a red sail on the bay at sunset, Or like a wheel breaking off a car And roaming the world on its own.