Charles Simic (1938 – 2023) was a Serbian American poet and poetry co-editor of The Paris Review. He was appointed the fifteenth United States Poet Laureate in 2007, succeeding Donald Hall.

On a cold morning in January 1994, I saw Donald Hall’s “Old and New Poems” in the personal collection at the Lucknow residence of the renowned Hindi poet Leeladhar Jaguri in Indira Nagar, and I was curious. 

I had never heard of Donald Hall before. Fortunately, the World Book Fair was happening in New Delhi, and I bought the book on February 10, 1994. 

I followed the poet because I liked his poetry, and when, in 2007, he was succeeded by Charles Simic, I came to know and read this wonderful poet.

Born in Belgrade, Simić and his family were forced to evacuate their home several times during WWII. He grew up in a war-torn Europe, which shaped much of his worldview. In 1954, at age sixteen, he immigrated to the United States with his brother and mother to join his father.

In an interview with the Cortland Review, he said, “Being one of the millions of displaced persons made an impression on me. In addition to my own little story of bad luck, I heard plenty of others. I'm still amazed by all the vileness and stupidity I witnessed in my life.” 

Simic began writing terse, imagistic poems, which were described as “tightly constructed Chinese puzzle boxes.” 

He famously stated: "Words make love on the page like flies in the summer heat, and the poet is merely the bemused spectator."

Influenced by Emily Dickinson and Pablo Neruda, Simic was a translator, essayist, and philosopher, opining on the current state of contemporary American poetry. 

He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1990 for The World Doesn't End and was a finalist for the Pulitzer in 1986 for Selected Poems, 1963–1983, and in 1987 for Unending Blues. 

To those interested in learning more about him, his extensive papers, along with other material about his work, are held in the University of New Hampshire Library's Milne Special Collections and Archives. 

Although I would suggest that everyone interested in good prose and good articles on poetry read Simic’s book “The Life of Images: Selected Prose” today, I am sharing his poem “In the Library,” which I translated into Hindi a long time ago, along with some other poems about libraries, mostly by Russian poets.

Read on - 

There’s a book called
A Dictionary of Angels.
No one had opened it in fifty years,
I know, because when I did,
The covers creaked, the pages
Crumbled. There I discovered

The angels were once as plentiful
As species of flies.
The sky at dusk
 Used to be thick with them.
 You had to wave both arms
 Just to keep them away.

Now the sun is shining
Through the tall windows.
The library is a quiet place.
Angels and gods huddled
In dark unopened books.
The great secret lies
On some shelf Miss Jones
Passes every day on her rounds.

She’s very tall, so she keeps
Her head tipped as if listening.
The books are whispering.
I hear nothing, but she does.