Monday, March 3, 2014

Kiev ii






  My mother was a braid of black smoke.
     She bore me swaddled over the burning cities,
     The sky was a vast and windy place for a child to play.
     We met many others who were just like us. They were trying
  to put on their overcoats with arms made of smoke.
     The high heavens were full of little shrunken deaf ears
  instead of stars.

  ..

  "I remember," someone said, "how in
  ancient times one could turn a wolf into a human and then
  lecture it to one's heart's content."

  ..

  It's snowing, says someone who has peeked into the dark
  night, and then he, too, turns toward you as you prepare your-
  self 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.


















































Charles Simic
New and Selected Poems
  1962 - 2012
  The World Doesn't End
  [fragment]
op. cit.






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