False Statements Book

Simic is one of the best, and in A Wedding in Hell he's in top form. "Lyric poets perpetuate the oldest values on earth," he reminds us. "They assert the individual's experience against that of the tribe." Simic chooses very deep specific topics, he is incredible at really focusing a poem on something small whether it be an event or an object, and then he condenses his poem into so few words that each word has a powerful punch and the poem collectively has a strong meaning. And never has he been more successful at unsettling a reader's certainties. "My aspiration," he admits, "is to create a kind of non-genre made up of fiction, autobiography, the essay, poetry, and of course, the joke!" In these books he fulfills that ambition.

This Morning

Enter without knocking, hard-working ant.
I'm just sitting here mulling over
What to do this dark, overcast day?
It was a night of the radio turned down low,
Fitful sleep, vague, troubling dreams.
I woke up lovesick and confused.
I thought I heard Estella in the garden singing
And some bird answering her,
But it was the rain. Dark tree tops swaying
And whispering. "Come to me my desire,"
I said. And she came to me by and by,
Her breath smelling of mint, her tongue
Wetting my cheek, and then she vanished.
Slowly day came, a gray streak of daylight
To bathe my hands and face in.
Hours passed, and then you crawled
Under the door, and stopped before me.
You visit the same tailors the mourners do,
Mr. Ant. I like the silence between us,
The quiet--that holy state even the rain
Knows about. Listen to her begin to fall,
As if with eyes closed,
Muting each drop in her wild-beating heart.