Reading: Light by Charles Simic

Fellow Dutch poet Willem Thies shared this short poem from the book “The lunatic” by Charles Simic on social media. I forward it here.

The light

Our thoughts like it quiet
In this no-bird dawn,
Like the way the early light
Takes the world as it finds it
And makes no comment
About the apples the wind
Has blown off a tree,
Or the horse broken loose
From a fenced field grazing
Quietly among the tombstones
In a small family graveyard.

The early sunlight, was my first thought, is it experienced like the moonlight, given the title ‘lunatic’? The quiet thoughts that encounter a quiet world, taking in everything without judgement enjoy their own quietude. If we look more closely we see how Simic invokes the different coordinates of our existence: the rebirth of life (apples blown off a tree), freedom (the horse broken loose), and eventually decay (tombstones).

It’s a wonderful short poem!