When you pick up a novel you read years ago, threads of narrative fabric stand out, looking somewhat familiar to you. Not so the poetry collection. If you’ve read it once, a year ago or more, chances are it will feel new to you as you read it again. A gift, then! Further testament to the mysteries of poetry.
Yesterday I pulled Simic’s That Little Something from the shelf as a tonic after watching a little too much of the evening news featuring our Leader, Pinocchio (what a dummy!). Effects were remarkable, swift, and salubrious!
Reinvigorated, I enjoyed the tranquil poem “To Boredom.” (Ah, for the good old days, when one could afford to be less vigilant about democracy being stolen from under your feet!)
To Boredom
by Charles Simic
I’m the child of your rainy Sundays.
I watched time crawl
Over the ceiling
Like a wounded fly.
A day would last forever,
Making pellets of bread,
Waiting for a branch
On a bare tree to move.
The silence would deepen,
The sky would darken,
As Grandmother knitted
With a ball of black yarn.
Heaven is like that.
In eternity’s classrooms,
The angels sit like bored children
With their heads bowed.
As former students, I’m sure we can all relate to “eternity’s classrooms,” especially in a poem called “To Boredom.” Few classrooms, after all, were capable of escaping so swift a predator as eternity. (We’ll see for ourselves some day, I assure you!)
2 thoughts on “The Child of Your Rainy Sundays”
Ken, thanks for these good Simic poems. I find him hit and miss, but these are Simic at his best. He’ll be reading at the U of Arizona Poetry Center this Thursday. I’ll be there! JC
This is where I say, “Lucky you! I am about as far from the U of AZ Poetry Center as an American can get!”