Simic - Walking the black cat : poems

A HARVEST ORIGINAL
HARCOURT, INC.
Orlanso Austin New York San Diego Toronto London

Copyright 1996 by Charles Simic

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Simic, Charles, 1938

Walking the black cat : poems/Charles Simic
p. cm.
"A Harvest original."
ISBN 978-0-15-100219-1 (hardcover).ISBN 978-0-15-600481-7 (pbk.)
I. Title.
PS3569.I4725W35 1996
811'.54dc20 96-17604

The text was set in Centaur
Designed by Lori McThomas Buley
Printed in the United States of America
First edition
G F E D C B
N M L K J I (pbk.)

Some of these poems previously appeared in the following magazines, to whose editors grateful acknowledgment is made: The New Yorker, The Times Literary Supplement, The London Review of Books, Partisan Review, New American Writing, Ploughshares, Boulevard, Harvard Review, Prose Poetry, The Paris Review, Antaeus, Grand Street, Mudfish, Indiana Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Baffler, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Chicago Review, The Yale Review, Verse, San Diego Reader, The Field, The American Poetry Review, Elle, Double Take, Boston Review and Portsmouth Review.

for Helen

Dark Corner

Mirrors at 4 A.M.

Relaxing in a Madhouse

Roach Motel

Emily's Theme

Cameo Appearance

The Friends of Heraclitus

An Address with Exclamation Points

Le Dame e i Cavalieri

Shadow Publishing Company

Talking to Little Birdies

The Master of Ceremonies

My Magician

Night in the House of Cards

On the Road to Somewhere Else

What the Gypsies Told my Grandmother while She Was Still a Young Girl

Little Unwritten Book

Winter Evening

Have You Met Miss Jones?

On the Sagging Porch

Dogs Hear It

Meditation in the Gutter

Charm School

Ghosts

The Conquering Hero Is Tired

The Story of Happiness

Theatrical Costumes

Bed Music

Marked Playing Cards

The Road in the Clouds

Caf Paradiso

Blindman's Bluff

Turn On the Lights

At the Cookout

Don't Wake the Cards

Free the Goldfish

Pastoral Harpsichord

Kitchen Helper

Entertaining the Canary

The Forest Walk

Slaughterhouse Flies

My Darling Premonition

Blood Orange

October Light

First Day of Summer

The Preacher Says

Sunset's Coloring Book

In a Forest of Whispers

Lone Tree

Make Yourself Invisible

Toad's Poolhall

Pain

Late Train

Club Midnight

Official Inquiry among the Grains of Sand

The Street Ventriloquist

The Father of Lies

Against Winter

Squinting Suspiciously

The Something

Collector's Tweezers

The Great Picnic

Hot Night

My Progress on Stilts

The Emperor

The Anniversary

Say, how'd you find me?
Ordinarily, I act deaf and dumb, but with you
It's different. Darting in and out
Of doorways, prowling after me
Like a black cat.

Just look at the suckers, I kept
Shouting at the world. It was no use.
They just stepped over me holding on to their hats,
Or lifting their skirts a little
On the way to hell.

He must be crazy, sprawled there
On the sidewalk, his fly unzipped,
His eyes closing. Only you came back
To see how I'm doing,
Only you peeked into every dark corner.

I'm a bird fluttering in flight.
Find me a nice, large cage with the door open.
Back me out of here with your kisses.
My shoes need laces.
My pants need your finger to hold them up.

You must come to them sideways
In rooms webbed in shadow,
Sneak a view of their emptiness
Without them catching
A glimpse of you in return.

The secret is,
Even the empty bed is a burden to them,
A pretense.
They are more themselves keeping
The company of a blank wall,
The company of time and eternity

Which, begging your pardon,
Cast no image
As they admire themselves in the mirror,
While you stand to the side
Pulling a hanky out
To wipe your brow surreptitiously.

They had already attached the evening's tears to the windowpanes.

The general was busy with the ant farm in his head.

The holy saints in their tombs were burning, all except one who was a prisoner of a dark-haired movie star.

Moses wore a false beard and so did Lincoln.

X reproduced the Socratic method of interrogation by demonstrating the ceiling's ignorance.

"They stole the secret of the musical matchbook from me," confided Adam.

"The world's biggest rooster was going to make me famous," said Eve.

O to run naked over the darkening meadow after the cold shower!

In the white pavilion the nurse was turning water into wine.

Hurry home, dark cloud.

The fears of my mother,
And I their projectionist
Cranking the projector.

An evening of noir films.
The electric chair is in it,
And so are the cops.
I'm smoking a cheap cigar,
Playing poker with a scar-faced killer
And a fat woman with a husky voice.
She drinks gin out of a bottle,
Sways her hips to the radio,
Has wedding plans.
At daybreak, a web of twisting shadows
Cast by a ceiling fan.
I have holes in my socks,
An asthmatic wheeze
When I kneel down to pray.

I also have a long tail
And look like a monkey
Because I keep lying all the time.

My dear trees, I no longer recognize you
In that wintry light.
You brought me a reminder I can do without:
The world is old, it was always old,
There's nothing new in it this afternoon.
The garden could've been a padlocked window
Of a pawnshop I was studying
With every item in it dust-covered.

Each one of my thoughts was being ghostwritten
By anonymous authors. Each time they hit
A cobwebbed typewriter key, I shudder.
Luckily, dark came quickly today.
Soon the neighbors were burning leaves,
And perhaps a few other things too.
Later, I saw the children run around the fire,
Their faces demonic in its flames.

I had a small, nonspeaking part
In a bloody epic. I was one of the
Bombed and fleeing humanity.
In the distance our great leader
Crowed like a rooster from a balcony,
Or was it a great actor
Impersonating our great leader?

That's me there, I said to the kiddies.
I'm squeezed between the man
With two bandaged hands raised
And the old woman with her mouth open
As if she were showing us a tooth

That hurts badly. The hundred times
I rewound the tape, not once
Could they catch sight of me
In that huge gray crowd,
That was like any other gray crowd.

Trot off to bed, I said finally.
I know I was there. One take
Is all they had time for.
We ran, and the planes grazed our hair,
And then they were no more
As we stood dazed in the burning city,
But, of course, they didn't film that.

Your friend has died, with whom