'Eyes Fastened with Pins' by Charles Simic

How much death works,

No one knows what a long

Day he puts in. The little

Wife always alone

Ironing death’s laundry.

The beautiful daughters

Setting death’s supper table.

The neighbors playing

Pinochle in the backyard

Or just sitting on the steps

Drinking beer. Death,

Meanwhile, in a strange

Part of town looking for

Someone with a bad cough,

But the address is somehow wrong,

Even death can’t figure it out

Among all the locked doors ...   

And the rain beginning to fall.

Long windy night ahead.

Death with not even a newspaper

To cover his head, not even

A dime to call the one pining away,

Undressing slowly, sleepily,

And stretching naked

On death’s side of the bed.1

1 Charles Simic, “Eyes Fastened with Pins” from Charles Simic: Selected Early Poems. Copyright © 1999 by Charles Simic. Reprinted with the permission of George Braziller, Inc.

 

Source: Charles Simic: Selected Early Poems (George Braziller Inc., 1999)