Old Couple

By Charles Simic b. 1938 Charles Simic

They’re waiting to be murdered,

Or evicted. Soon

They expect to have nothing to eat.

In the meantime, they sit.

A violent pain is coming, they think.

It will start in the heart

And climb into the mouth.

They’ll be carried off in stretchers, howling.

Tonight they watch the window

Without exchanging a word.

It has rained, and now it looks

Like it’s going to snow a little.

I see him get up to lower the shades.

If their window stays dark,

I know his hand has reached hers

Just as she was about to turn on the lights.

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

Biography

Charles Simic is widely recognized as one of the most visceral and unique poets writing today. Simic’s work has won numerous awards, among them the 1990 Pulitzer Prize, the MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” the Griffin International Poetry Prize, and, simultaneously, the Wallace Stevens Award and appointment as U.S. Poet Laureate. He taught English and creative writing for over thirty years at the University of New Hampshire. . . .

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