Snowy Morning Blues
by Charles Simic
The translator is a close reader.
He wears thick glasses
As he peers out of the window
At the snowy fields and bushed
That are like a sheet of paper
Covered with quick scribble
In a language he knows well enough,
Without knowing any words in it,
Only what the eyes discern,
And the heart intuits of its idiom.
So quiet now, not even a faint
Rustle of a page being turned
In a white and wordless dictionary
For the translator to avail himself
Before whatever word are there
Grow obscure in the coming darkness.
from My Noiseless Entourage
The translator is a close reader.
He wears thick glasses
As he peers out of the window
At the snowy fields and bushed
That are like a sheet of paper
Covered with quick scribble
In a language he knows well enough,
Without knowing any words in it,
Only what the eyes discern,
And the heart intuits of its idiom.
So quiet now, not even a faint
Rustle of a page being turned
In a white and wordless dictionary
For the translator to avail himself
Before whatever word are there
Grow obscure in the coming darkness.
from My Noiseless Entourage
posted by RNovack at 4:24 AM
1 Comments:
Pigeons at Dawn
by Charles Simic
Extraordinary efforts are being made
To hide things from us, my friend.
Some stay up into the wee hours
To search their souls.
Others undress each other in darkened rooms.
The creaky old elevator
Took us down to the icy cellar first
To show us a mop and a bucket
Before it deigned to ascend again
With a sigh of exasperation.
Under the vast, early-dawn sky
The city lay silent before us.
Everything on hold:
Rooftops and water towers,
Clouds and wisps of white smoke.
We must be patient, we told ourselves,
See if the pigeons will coo now
For the one who comes to her window
To feed them angel cake,
All but invisible, but for her slender arm.
Pigeons behind all our heads... They do keep one up, I find, and often around 4 am.
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