Social commentaries

Walking back to the office after lunch,
I saw Hans. “Mister Isham, Mister Isham,”
He called out in his hurry, “Herr Wegner needs you.
A woman waiting for a border pass
Took poison, she is dead, and the police
Are there to take the body.” In the hall,
The secretaries stood outside their doors
Silently waiting with Wegner. “Sir,” he said,
“It was her answer on the questionnaire,
A clerk for the Gestapo. So it was.”
Within the outer office, by the row
Of wooden chairs, one lying on its side,

All winter long you listened for the boom
Of distant cannon wheeled into their place.
Sometimes outside beneath a bombers’ moon
You stood alone to watch the searchlights trace

Their careful webs against the boding sky,
While miles away on Munich’ s vacant square
The bombs lunged down with an unruly cry
Whose blast you saw yet could but faintly hear.

Life in
unbridled

collapse, Let tuneful praise ascend

Not a single line

out of step with my band, aboard

the riverboat
when the sun
shown red

and especially dark upon my room

The whole country
in a courtly dance
its tiny mouth open
I pour another cup of wine
and falling, rising
the children remove their toys
around the small apartment
to their bunk beds
not quite dark yet
early spring with snow
on the wind
the woman across the street
bent like a sickle
collecting bottles and cans
knocks, goes on
I wonder where she lives
and the stars shining
on her greasy clothes

“Shalom,” called the pink-shirted man in the Oceanic
Terminal of Heathrow, and I snapped,
“I do not want to talk to you.” Manic

with fear, I extended one pointy-tipped shoe, tapped
the message home. My cases bulged with the wrong
clothes, every outfit trimmed with clipped

All hail the crumbling stone monument
to the Battle of Bad Axe, the wooden helve

long rotted and burned, the short walk to the river,
where we can bathe in its brown,

where a steamboat ghost huffs out
a stream of bullets. We are invulnerable

to their spectral lead, descendants
of fur traders (beaver, ermine,

skunk). Our lungs are clean and pink. Let’ s visit
the saw shop, the greenhouse with bluff views,

the pines and stacks of firewood,
the Blackhawk general store, named for

We were young and it was an accomplishment
to have a body. No one said this. No one
said much beyond “throw me that sky” or
“can the lake sleep over?” The lake could not.
The lake was sent home and I ate too many
beets, went around with beet-blood tongue
worrying about my draft card-burning brother
going to war. Other brothers became holes
at first base at war, then a few holes
Harleying back from war in their always
it seemed green jackets with pockets galore
and flaps for I wondered bullets, I wondered

I will pull an airplane with my teeth
and I will pull an airplane with my hair.
I write about cats. Cats, when you read this,
write about me. Be the change you want to see.

I’ ve legally changed my name to Whites Only.
Changed it back, I should say.
DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME made me
the man I am today.

That, and the University of  Phoenix.
Old man, take a look at my life.
Charles Simic, in the gloaming, with a roach,
take a look at my life. I’ m a lot like you.

People, don't ask me again where my shoes are.
The valley I walked through was frozen to me
as I was to it. My heavy hide, my zinc
talisman — I'm fine, people. Don't stare
at my feet. And don't flash the sign of the cross
in my face. I carry the Blue Cross Card —
card among cards, card of my number
and gold seal. So shall ye know I am of
the system, in the beast's belly and up
to here, people, with your pity.

Over the warming ground, swings toll like clock tower bells.
Squirrels spiral the trunk of a pine.
We fill a pail with sand.
The day is robin’ s eggshell fine.

My mother’ s shoulder had three shallow scars.
Shining archipelago.
The quiet theaters of our lives.
Immune is a sung word, skirting sorrow.

Kneeling at no registry of toddlers with amorphous voices.
Night sweats without monument.
The lake has the sea on its breath.
One man has an island.