Past-Lives Therapy, Charles Simic

Past-Lives Therapy

BY CHARLES SIMIC

They explained to me the bloody bandages

On the floor in the maternity ward in Rochester, N.Y.,   

Cured the backache I acquired bowing to my old master,   

Made me stop putting thumbtacks round my bed.

They showed me an officer on horseback,

Waving a saber next to a burning farmhouse   

And a barefoot woman in a nightgown,

Throwing stones after him and calling him Lucifer.

I was a straw-headed boy in patched overalls.   

Come dark a chicken would roost in my hair.   

Some even laid eggs as I played my ukulele   

And my mother and father crossed themselves.

Next, I saw myself inside an abandoned gas station   

Constructing a spaceship out of a coffin,

Red traffic cone, cement mixer and ear warmers,

When a church lady fainted seeing me in my underwear.

Some days, however, they opened door after door,   

Always to a different room, and could not find me.   

There'd be only a small squeak now and then,   

As if a miner's canary got caught in a mousetrap.

Charles Simic, "Past-Lives Therapy" from The Voice at 3:00 AM: Selected Late and New Poems.Copyright © 2003 by Charles Simic.