Things

By Louis Simpson 1923–2012 Louis Simpson

A man stood in the laurel tree

Adjusting his hands and feet to the boughs.

He said, “Today I was breaking stones

On a mountain road in Asia,

When suddenly I had a vision

Of mankind, like grass and flowers,

The same over all the earth.

We forgave each other; we gave ourselves

Wholly over to words.

And straightway I was released

And sprang through an open gate.”

I said, “Into a meadow?”

He said, “I am impervious to irony.

I thank you for the word ...

I am standing in a sunlit meadow.

Know that everything your senses reject

Springs up in the spiritual world.”

I said, “Our scientists have another opinion.

They say, you are merely phenomena.”

He said, “Over here they will be angels

Singing, Holy holy be His Name!

And also, it works in reverse.

Things which to us in the pure state are mysterious,

Are your simplest articles of household use—

A chair, a dish, and meaner even than these,

The very latest inventions.

Machines are the animals of the Americans—

Tell me about machines.”

I said, “I have suspected

The Mixmaster knows more than I do,

The air conditioner is the better poet.

My right front tire is as bald as Odysseus—

How much it must have suffered!

Then, as things have a third substance

Which is obscure to both our senses,

Let there be a perpetual coming and going

Between your house and mine.”

Louis Simpson, “Things” from Collected Poems (Saint Paul, Minn.: Paragon House, 1988). Copyright © 1988 by Louis Simpson. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

Source: Collected Poems (Paragon House, 1988)

Biography

Poet, editor, translator, and critic Louis Simpson was born in 1923, in Jamaica, to Scottish and Russian parents. A contemporary of Confessional poets like Robert Lowell, John Berryman, and Sylvia Plath, Simpson’s early work followed a familiar arc. In the New York Times Book Review, critic David Orr noted its highlights: “Simpson has followed a path lined with signposts sunk so deep in our nation's poetic terra firma that . . .

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