Saturday, January 14, 2012

Poems for Post-Tweflth Night


Trouble Coming, by Charles Simic
One saw signs of it in certain families.
The future was like an unfriendly waiter
Standing ready to take their dinner order
From a menu they could not read.

To look without understanding was their lot
While a salesman in the TV store
Kept changing channels too quickly
For them to retain a single image.

The little flags freshly posted in a cemetery
Said nothing as they hung listlessly
In the early summer breeze,
Not that anybody particularly noticed.

The sunset over the approaching city
Was like a banquet in a madhouse
The inmates were happily setting on fire
Just as our train ducked into a tunnel.

My father sent me a whole passel of The New York Review of Books, and the above poem was published there.  The next poem is a haiku written by one of my students last semester and I thought a fitting counterpart to Simic's.


Zipline, by Suzanne Shields
Zipping through the trees
Altitude is everything
Life is delicate.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Beautiful, E.

Julie Fukuda said...

Neat! Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment. Somehow I can't send an e-mail...but then, I am rather challenged where computers are involved.

Julie Fukuda said...

Hi again. The banner is basted and ready to go. The piano keys are all marked and cut. I have a ticket to the Tokyo Dome show. It begins tomorrow but I would never go again on the first day.It lasts 8 days so I will go next week some time.