broadside artwork by Min Goto
This January, we lost the Serbian-American poet Charles Simic, born in 1938 in Belgrade. Over five decades and dozens of books, this winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Frost Medal was a compelling ambassador of the uncanny. He lingered before dusty pawn-shop windows, conversed with hoot owls, and crystallized the oddities of living in the late-20th- and early-21st-century as an experience of essential otherness. But he also suggested that we could find wonder in it, if we happened around the corner at just the right moment.
Summer Dusk
You’ve been the love of my life, Light lingering in the sky At the close of a long day Over the roofs of some city Like New York or Rome, As streets empty in the heat, And shadows lengthen And darken every room, Occupied or still vacant, Where some turn on the lamp And others step to a window To savor this fleeting moment When everything stops As if stunned by its own beauty.
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More on this book and author:
Learn more about No Land in Sight by Charles Simic.
Browse other books by Charles Simic.
After Charles Simic’s passing, the poet Carolyn Forché published an essay on Simic, their friendship, and their shared connection with Central Europe.
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