At that same party, I spoke to a lawyer who insisted we had met in London two years before. I explained my accent to a doctor by telling him that I was raised by a family of deaf mutes.

  There was a girl there, too, who kept smiling sweetly at me without saying anything. Her mother told me that I reminded her of her brother, who was executed by the Germans in Norway. She was going to give me more details, but I excused myself, telling everyone that I had a sudden and terrible toothache that required immediate attention.

  I got the idea of sleeping on the roof in Manhattan on hot nights from my mother and father. That’s what they did during the War, except it wasn’t a roof but a large terrace on the top floor of a building in downtown Belgrade. There was a blackout, of course. I remember immense starry skies, and how silent the city was. I would begin to speak, but someone—I could not tell for a moment who it was—would put a hand over my mouth.

  Like a ship at sea we were with stars and clouds up above. We were sailing full speed ahead. “That’s where the infinite begins,” I remember my father pointing with his long, dark hand.

  If my father has a ghost, he’s standing outside some elegant men’s store on Madison Avenue on a late summer evening. A tall man studying a pair of brown suede Italian shoes. He himself is impeccably dressed in a tan suit, a blue shirt of an almost purple hue with a silk tie the color of rusty rose. He seems in no hurry. At the age of fifty-three, with his hair thinning and slicked back, he could be an Italian or a South American. Belle Georgio, one waitress in Chicago used to call him. No one would guess by his appearance that he is almost always broke.

  I’m packing parcels in the Lord & Taylor basement during the Christmas rush with a bunch of losers. One fellow is an inventor. He has a new kind of aquarium with piped music, which makes it look as if the fish are doing water ballet, but the world is not interested. Another man supports three ex-wives, so he has a night job in addition to this one. His eyes close all the time. He’s so pale, he could pass for a stiff in an open coffin.

  Then there’s Felix, a mousy fellow a bit older than I who claims to be a distant relative of the English royal family. One time he brought the chart of his family tree to make us stop laughing and explained the connection. What did not make sense was his poverty. He said he was a writer but wouldn’t tell us what kind. “Are you writing porno?” one Puerto Rican girl asked him.

  Her name was Rosie. She liked boxing. One time she and I went on a date to watch the fights at the Garden. We sat in the Spanish section. “Kill him! Kill him!” she screamed all evening without interruption. At the end she was so tired she wouldn’t even have a drink with me, and had to rush home.

  At a poetry reading given by Allen Tate I met a young poet who was attending a workshop given by Louise Bogan at NYU. I sat in a few times and accompanied my new friends for beers after class. One day I even showed two of my poems to Bogan. One was called “Red Armchair,” and it had to do with an old chair thrown out on the sidewalk for the trashmen to pick up. The other poem I don’t remember. Bogan was very kind. She fixed a few things but was generally encouraging, which surprised me, since I didn’t think much of the poems myself .

  The other critique of my poetry came later that fall and it was devastating. I had met a painter in a bar, an older fellow living in poverty with a wife and two small kids in a cold water flat in the Village, where he painted huge, realistic canvases of derelicts in the manner of 1930’s social realism. A skyscraper and underneath a poor man begging. The message was obvious, but the colors were nice.

  Despite the difference in our ages, we saw each other quite a bit, talking art and literature, until one day I showed him my poems. We were sitting in his kitchen with a bottle of whiskey between us. He leaned back in the chair and read the poems slowly, slowly while I watched him closely. At some point I began to detect annoyance in him and then anger. Finally, he looked at me as if seeing me for the first time and said something like: “Simic, I thought you were a smart kid. This is pure shit you’re writing!”

  I was prepared for gentle criticism in the manner of Louise Bogan, even welcomed it, but his bluntness stunned me. I left in a daze. I was convinced he was right. If I’d had a pistol, I would have shot myself on the spot. Then, little by little, mulling over what he had said, I got pissed off. There were some good things in my poems, I thought. “Fuck him,” I shouted to some guy who came my way in the street. Of course, he was right, too, and it hurt me that he was, but all the same.

  I came out of my daze just as I was entering Central Park on 59th Street. I had walked more than sixty blocks totally oblivious of my surroundings. I sat on a bench and reread my poems, crossing out most of the lines, attempting to rewrite them then and there, still angry, still miserable, and at the same time grimly determined.

  There was this old guy in Washington Square Park who used to lecture me about Sacco and Vanzetti and the great injustice done to them. We’d share a bench from time to time, and I’d hear him say again and again how if shit was worth money the poor would be born without assholes. He wore gray gloves, walked with a cane, tipped his hat to ladies, and worried about me. “A kid just off the boat,” he’d say to someone passing by. “Sure to get screwed if he doesn’t watch out.”

  I went to see Ionesco’s Bald Soprano with Boris. It was being presented at a small theater in the Village. There were only six people in the audience, and that included the two of us. They gave the performance anyway. When it came to the love scene with the woman who has three noses, the actors got carried away on the couch. Their voices went down to a whisper as they started undressing each other. Boris and I just looked at each other. The other four people had suddenly become invisible. Well, they didn’t fuck each other, but they came very close. I have no recollection of the rest of the play except that at the exit the streets were covered with newly fallen snow.

  I was five minutes late from lunch at the insurance company where I was working and my boss chewed me out for being irresponsible in front of twenty or thirty other drudges. 1 sat at my desk for a while fuming, then I rose slowly, wrapped my scarf around my neck and put my gloves on in plain view of everybody, and walked out without looking back. I didn’t have an overcoat and on the street it was snowing, but I felt giddy, deliriously happy at being free.

  “My boy seeks the secret and the meaning of Time,” we are told upon entering. If we weren’t told, we’d say he’s just staring out of the window at the rain. His mother wants us to be very quiet as we inspect the room she’s thinking of renting.

  “Povera e nuda via, Filosofia,” wrote the Italian poet Petrarch. The rain getting heavier and then the sound of thunder over Manhattan.

  The face of my daughter lit by a table lamp while she sucks a finger pricked by a compass. A drop of blood already fallen on the black letters and numerals of the difficult homework, as she worries whether to hand it in, just as it is, to the stern old nun who’ll make her stand in front of the class waiting for the verdict . . . The spring day bright with sunlight. The nun’s small, tight fist clouding the answer.

  We were on our third bottle of wine when he said he was going to show me the pictures of his girlfriend. To my surprise, the photographs spread out on the table were of a naked woman shamelessly displaying herself. Leaning over my shoulder he wanted me to note each detail, her crotch, her ass, her breasts, until I felt aroused. It was an odd situation. My host’s pregnant wife was asleep in the next room. The photographs were spread all over the dining room table. There must’ve been close to a hundred of them. I looked and I listened. From time to time, I could hear the wife snore.

  Approaching Manhattan on the train at night, I remember the old Polish and Ukrainian women wielding their mops in the brightly lit towers. I’d be working on some ledger that wouldn’t balance, and they’d be scrubbing floors on their knees. They were fat and they all wore flowered dresses. The youngest would stand on a chair and dust off the portrait of the grim founder of the company. The old black man who ran the elevator would bow to them like a headwaiter in a fancy restaurant as he took them from one floor to the next. That would make them laugh. You’d see they had teeth missing. More than a few teeth missing.

  It was a window with a view of a large office with many identical desks at which men and women sat working. A woman got up with papers in hand and walked the length of the floor to where a man rose to meet her at the other end. He waved his arms as he talked, while she stood before him with her head lowered, and I went on tying my necktie in the hotel room across, the street. I was about to turn away from the window when I realized that the man was yelling at the woman, and that she was sobbing.

  Here’s a scene for you. My father and I are walking down Madison, when I spot a blue overcoat in a store called the British American House. We study it, comment on the cut, and my father suggests I try it on. I know he has no money, but he insists since it’s beginning to snow a little and I’m only wearing a tweed jacket. We go in, I put it on, and it fits perfectly. Immediately, I’m in love with it. We ask the price and it’s two hundred dollars—which was a lot of money in 1959. Too bad, I think, but then my father asks me if I want it. I think maybe he’s showing off in front of the salesman or he’s come into some money he hasn’t told me about. “Do you want it?” he asks again while the salesman goes to attend to another customer. “You’ve no money, George,” I remind him, expecting him to contradict me or come to his senses. “Don’t worry,” is his reply.

  I’ve seen him do this before and it embarrasses me. He asks for the boss and the two of them sequester themselves for a while, while I stand around waiting for us to be kicked out. Instead, he emerges triumphant and I wear the overcoat into the street. A born con man. His manner and appearance inspired such confidence that with a small down payment and promise to pay the rest in a week or two, he’d get what he wanted. This was in the days before credit cards and credit bureaus when store owners had to make such decisions on the spot. They trusted him, and he did pay eventually whatever he owed. The crazy thing was that he pulled this stunt only in the best stores. It would never occur to him to ask for credit from a grocer, and yet he often went hungry despite his huge salary.

  My father had phenomenal debts. He borrowed money any chance he had and paid his bills only when absolutely necessary. It was nothing for him to spend the rent money the night before it was due. I lived in terror of my landlords and landladies while he seemingly never worried. We’d meet after work and he’d suggest dinner in a French restaurant and I’d resist, knowing it was his rent money he was proposing to spend. He’d describe the dishes and wines we could have in tantalizing detail, and I’d keep reminding him of the rent. He’d explain to me slowly, painstakingly, as if I were feeble-minded, that one should never worry about the future. “We’ll never be so young as we are tonight,” he’d say. “If we are smart, tomorrow we’ll figure out how to pay the rent.” In the end, who could say no? I never did.

  On the street corner the card trickster was shuffling his three cards using a large cardboard box as a table. The cards, the quick hands fluttered. It looked like a cock fight. Five of us watching without expression, our heads, in the meantime, buzzing with calculations and visions of riches. The day was cold so we all had to squint.

  “Tough guys,” he said, “time to place your bets.”

  I became more and more lucid the later it got. This was always my curse. Everybody was already asleep. I tried to wake my dearest, but she drew me down on her breasts sleepily. We made love, slowly, languidly, and then I talked to her for hours about the necessity of poetry while she slept soundly.

  II

  Once again, I find myself on the North Pole. I have no sled, no dogs and I’m dressed for bed. You ask me if I’m cold? Of course I’m cold, you idiots.

  Dark December evening. In the church the saints are awake watching the snow fall.

  Ariadne plays the piano one finger at a time like a funeral in the rain. Theseus wants something we can all dance to. The Minotaur whom everybody here calls dumbbell nods his head happily.

  The child beaters took their little son to church on Sundays.

  Sleepwalkers unite. Congregate on the rooftops at midnight.

  I traveled over some bad roads in my childhood. It’s no wonder I have a few loose screws.

  History is a cookbook. The tyrants are chefs. The philosophers write menus. The priests are waiters. The military men are bouncers. The singing you hear is the poets washing dishes in the kitchen.

  The kindness of one human being to another in times of mass hatred and violence deserves more respect than the preaching of all the churches since the beginning of time.

  Headlines in supermarket tabloids:

  A FLY TERRORIZES KANSAS.

  CANNIBAL WAITER EATS SIX DINERS IN L.A.

  BABY SMUGGLED INSIDE A WATERMELON.

  Stupidity is the secret spice historians have difficulty identifying in this soup we keep slurping.

  The number of watches and clocks to be found today must be an affront to eternity.

  Let us not forget that Romeo and Juliet, too, used to fart and scratch their asses from time to time.

  I remember a small boy saying in the lull between two waves of planes during a bombing raid: “I want to go pipi, Mama.”

  I lay in the dark thinking about the vastness of the universe while my wife snored away on the next pillow.

  Here’s a fifty-year-old wine of noble vintage ready to be poured down the drain.

  An old man singing “Oh Marie” at the top of his lungs while being shoved handcuffed toward a police car with its lights flashing.

  Oh, to be inside a mailbox next to a letter declaring love and steamy kisses to an unknown recipient.

  Faces in the crowd. They were going about their business when they saw me staring at them and they were either amused or they turned away annoyed. All the time they were hiding in plain view and I found them out.

  Riding on a sow, holding on to its ears and shouting, “Out of my way, chickens!” Did I really do that? I’m a member of that minority which refuses to be part of any officially designated minority.

  I like to hear a happy tune played sadly.

  Sgt. Eric Schrump of the 5th Marine Regiment. “We had a great day. We killed a lot of people.”

  “The same crooks . . . wherever you go . . . regardless of regime, philosophy, creed, or color . . .” (Celine). That has been my experience too.

  The Golden Age of American Literature. When cowboys used to read Emily Dickinson in the saddle, and the cops walking the beat carried a volume of Wallace Stevens in the pocket of their overcoats.

  Every defense of poetry is a defense of folly.

  The occupiers everywhere, I note, are outraged by the bad manners of the occupied who do nothing but complain about being mistreated.

  The farther the injustice, the louder the outrage.

  Sat up like a firecracker in bed, startled by the thought of my death.

  Photographs show us what we do not have words to say.

  Jazz is about happiness. Old happiness made into new happiness.

  Religion: Turning the mystery of Being into a figure who resembles our grandfather sitting on the potty.

  Snow arriving this morning at my door like a mail-Order bride.

  Sultry demoiselle Isabelle, smutty photo a succubus dangles before a monk kneeling in prayer.

  Canned laughter on TV like beer cans tied to a car driving in the dark with no headlights.

  The comedy of clocks: The clock the universe keeps and the one the roach running up my kitchen wall has just consulted.

  Who said, “If God didn’t want us to drink, why did he make wine so good?”

  The Egyptian bronze mirror (1500 BC) in the British Museum where I managed to catch a blurred reflection of myself one rainy afternoon in 1982 is still there.

  The new American Dream is to get to be very rich and still be regarded as a victim.

  It’s a kind of neighborhood where a rat is likely to keep a child as a pet.

  Every nation is scared of the truth of what they have done to others.

  Our rich are better at thieving than our thieves of common variety.

  The chief role of a free press in democracy is to conceal that the country is ruled by a few.

  Caterpillar, run over by a little girl’s bike, twisting in pain.

  While he sat thinking, he kept scratching his bald head with a match as if trying to set it on fire.

  In Charon’s boat I intend to give my seat to the first lady that comes along.

  “This museum is full of forgeries,” I whispered to her as I felt her ass. “I don’t care,” she replied a she put her hand on my crotch. “They look good to me.”

  The soul is a shadow cast by the light of consciousness. In the meantime, I can feel a sneeze coming.

  True Tales of the Supernatural. How I ate twelve hot dogs at a ball game while my team kept losing.

  Did solitary strollers whistle past graveyards in Cotton Mather’s time, or were they as silent as the graves?

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8