Did you bring beer?
We asked the men in blue
As they broke down the door.
If Eliot's Preludes are Chopin, then Simic goes all Liberace at times. He just doesn't care.
Without hanging a moral compass around the neck of his perceiving subject, unbalancing his vision like a phenomenological albatross, Simic allows the frame that is seen to be seen for what it is -- whatever values (moral, aesthetic) are self-evident and don't require the intervention of prejudice. Such is the case with his wonderful poem "Among My Late Visitors":
There is also a cow
Whose eyes the soldiers
Took out with a knife
And lit straw under its tail
So it would run blind
Over a minefield
And thereafter into my head
From time to time
I've never considered 'war' that way before. Going through Simic's poems is like going through a mindfield full of IEDs (improvised expressive devices), if you'll forgive the pun.
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