Serbian-born Charles Simic is a minimalist American Poet who immigrated (defected) from Serbia with his family to the United States in 1954 at the age of 16. Having witnessed countless tragedies and atrocities at a young age, his layered poems reflect what he's seen and heard - through terse imagery and poems which are constructed "like Chinese puzzle boxes" as critics have said.
Simic says about poetry : "Words make love on the page like flies in the summer heat and the poet is only the bemused spectator."
Simic's career has been distinguished - including a stint as poetry editor of Paris Review and he was appointed the 15th U.S. Poet Laureate in 2007.
Enjoy this classic work by Simic. We look forward to blogging more of his poetry soon!
One of his more recent collections, "Master of Disguises" is available below.
Read Your Fate
by Charles Simic
A world's disappearing.
Little street,
You were too narrow,
Too much in the shade already.
You had only one dog,
One lone child.
You hid your biggest mirror,
Your undressed lovers.
Someone carted them off
In an open truck.
They were still naked, travelling
On their sofa
Over a darkening plain,
Some unknown Kansas or Nebraska
With a storm brewing.
The woman opening a red umbrella
In the truck. The boy
And the dog running after them,
As if after a rooster
With its head chopped off.
Little street,
You were too narrow,
Too much in the shade already.
You had only one dog,
One lone child.
You hid your biggest mirror,
Your undressed lovers.
Someone carted them off
In an open truck.
They were still naked, travelling
On their sofa
Over a darkening plain,
Some unknown Kansas or Nebraska
With a storm brewing.
The woman opening a red umbrella
In the truck. The boy
And the dog running after them,
As if after a rooster
With its head chopped off.
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