Charles Simic

• 
  
  

 

from The World Doesn't End

         I ran into the poet Mark Strand on the street. He immediately challenged me by drinking a glass of wine while standing on his head. I was astonished. He didn't even spill a drop. It was one of the bottles Baudelaire stole from his stepfather the Ambassador in 1848. "Is this what is known as subjective reality?" I asked. Years ago this same Strand translated a famous Quechua poem about a man raising a fly with wings of gold in a green bottle, and now look at him!

         I am the last Napoleonic soldier. It's almost two hundred years later and I am still retreating from Moscow. The road is lined with white birch trees and the mud comes up to my knees. The one-eyed woman wants to sell me a chicken, and I don't even have any clothes on.
         The Germans are going one way; I am going the other. The Russians are going still another way and waving good-by. I have a ceremonial saber. I use it to cut my hair, which is four feet long.

         Comedy of errors at an elegant downtown restaurant.
         The chair is really a table making fun of itself. The coat tree has just learned to tip waiters. A shoe is served a plate of black caviar.
         "My dear and most esteemed sir," says a potted palm to a mirror, "it is absolutely useless to excite yourself."