Poem, por Charles Simic | poemas, ensayos y cuentos en Poéticous

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Charles Simic

Poem

The two stanza poem sets a scene of an urban man tying his shoes. First there is the imagery of the smoke rising in the sky – the endless possibilities “great strides”, freedom “I belong to no one” – the imagery almost makes you want to look up, or at least “the smoke mount” makes you think of something rising and unrestrained. The second image is an inverse of the first, now the “down” image permeates it. He mentions his “shoe” an echo to the “stride” in the first stanza (we stride a form of walking). The shoes can easily represent civilization, a banal action that ties to where and what he is, a force that connects him and keeps him tied down to earth and all the responsibilities that it entails for us. Dreaming is important and vital, but so is putting on your shoes and remembering where you are. Or it might be completely meta poem, a comment on poetry itself and what it does for us – takes us to another level, while being grounded in every day experience.

References

http://www.clareified.com/2010/05/05/a-poem-by-any-other-name-by-guest-blogger-petitedov/

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Preferido o celebrado por...

Y. J. Hall

Otras obras de Charles Simic...

Summer in the Country

One shows me how to lie down in a… Another how to slip my hand under… Another how to kiss with a mouth f… Another how to catch fireflies in… Here is a stable with a single bla…

Charon’s Cosmology

With only his dim lantern To tell him where he is And every time a mountain Of fresh corpses to load up Take them to the other side

I liked my little hole, Its window facing a brick wall. Next door there was a piano. A few evenings a month a crippled old man came to play

Talking to Little Birdies

Not a peep out of you now After the bedlam early this mornin… Are you begging pardon of me Hidden up there among the leaves, Or are your brains momentarily ove…

Heights of Folly

O crows circling over my head and… I admit to being, at times, Suddenly, and without the slightes… Exceedingly happy. On a morning otherwise sunless,

The obvious is difficult To prove. Many prefer The hidden. I did, too. I listened to the trees. They had a secret

Green Buddhas On the fruit stand. We eat the smile And spit out the teeth.

This last continent Still to be discovered. My hand is dreaming, is building Its ship. For crew it takes A pack of bones, for food

St. John of the Cross wore dark g… As he passed me on the street. St. Theresa of Avila, beautiful a… Turned her back on me. “Soulmate,” they hissed. “It’s hi…

There was a melon fresh from the g… So ripe the knife slurped As it cut it into six slices. The children were going back to sc… Their mother, passing out paper pl…

To find clues where there are none… That’s my job now, I said to the Dictionary on my desk. The world… My window has grown illegible, And so has the clock on the wall.

A New Version: 1980 What is that little black thing I… in the white? Walt Whitman One

Empire of Dreams

On the first page of my dreambook It’s always evening In an occupied country. Hour before the curfew. A small provincial city.

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

Shoes, secret face of my inner lif… Two gaping toothless mouths, Two partly decomposed animal skins Smelling of mice-nests. My brother and sister who died at…