My Noiseless Entourage Hardcover - 2005

Details

• Title My Noiseless Entourage
• Author Charles Simic
• Binding Hardcover
• Edition First Edition
• Pages 64
• Volumes 1
• Language ENG
• Publisher Houghton Mifflin, Orlando, Florida, U.S.A.
• Date April 4, 2005
• ISBN 9780151012145 / 0151012148
• Weight 0.49 lbs (0.22 kg)
• Dimensions 8.76 x 6.04 x 0.53 in (22.25 x 15.34 x 1.35 cm)
• Library of Congress Catalog Number 2004025586
• Dewey Decimal Code 811.54

DESCRIPTION OF A LOST THING

It never had a name,
Nor do I remember how I found it.
I carried it in my pocket
Like a lost button
Except it wasn't a button.
Horror movies,
All-night cafeterias,
Dark barrooms
And poolhalls,
On rain-slicked streets.
It led a quiet, unremarkable existence
Like a shadow in a dream,
An angel on a pin,
And then it vanished.
The years passed with their row
Of nameless stations,
Till somebody told me this is it!
And fool that I was,
I got off on an empty platform
With no town in sight.


SHADING EXERCISE
This street could use a bit of shade
And the same goes for that small boy
Playing alone in the sun,
A shadow to dart after him like a black kitten.
His parents sit in a room with shades drawn.
The stairs to the cellar
Are hardly used any more
Except for an occasional prowler.
Like a troop of traveling actors dressed to play Hamlet,
The evening shadows come.
They spend their days hidden in the trees
Outside the old courthouse.
Now comes the hard part:
What to do with the stones in the graveyard?
The sun doesn't care for ambiguities,
But I do. I open my door and let them in.


Copyright © 2005 by Charles Simic

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be mailed to the following address: Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

"Establishes Simic once again as a reliable master of his particular, melancholy, wry mode."