Poetry Friday: More Simic Love

I think this was actually the first Simic poem I ever read, in a Year’s Best Poetry anthology from the early nineties, but I could have invented that history. Maybe there was a different first-Simic-poem-I-read entirely. Whatever the case, this remains one of my favorites.

Read Your Fate   
by Charles Simic

A world’s disappearing.
Little street,
You were too narrow,
Too much in the shade already.

You had only one dog,
One lone child.
You hid your biggest mirror,
Your undressed lovers.

Someone carted them off
In an open truck.
They were still naked, travelling
On their sofa

Over a darkening plain,
Some unknown Kansas or Nebraska
With a storm brewing.
The woman opening a red umbrella

In the truck. The boy
And the dog running after them,
As if after a rooster
With its head chopped off.

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Today’s round-up is at Miss Rumphius’s place.