Simon Perchik's poetry has appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, The New Yorker and elsewhere. The son of a silk weaver, Perchik was born in Paterson, New Jersey in 1923. He has published many books, among them: Hands Collected: The Books of Simon Perchik (Poems 1949–1999), edited by David Baratier Pavement Saw Press. In Susan Tepper's words: "there’s music here—but no soothing cadence. Instead, words clash and clatter more in the manner of plates breaking, and commonplace images ... leap into the extraordinary..." Or as Ethan Paquin put it, this is the poetry of "unique meditation on the orogeny of a soul."
Face to face though the first tomorrow
was not yet needed, waited in the Earth
as the promise to become a morning
and she would arrive between two suns
where there was none before
was the nights, years, centuries
your shadow took to darken, clings
till its silence washes over you
carried as dew and beginnings.
*
Drop by drop, its silence
holds on to the mud and each other
though this puddle sparkles
from tides that are not sunlight
–what you hear are the shells
darkening and their nest
breaking open for more air
the way you toss in a pebble
just to hear its ripples
as the splash from your first day
still reaching for shore, lower, lower
and flight no longer possible.
*
Compared to its actors in love
the movie darkens with The End
and though the stage no longer moves
you reach behind the blackening pit
grasp its gigantic monster – four eyes
four lips, four arms opening and closing
devouring itself and the screen
not yet covered with flowers
asking you to leave though the usher
has heard it all before, says it’s safe
even with the lights on, with the grass
and aisles growing over you.
*
You need rain water, boiled
till the splash makes it to shore
and the egg becomes a morning
–pots know this, the hurry-up
and wait the way your hand
clings to the still warm shell
as if it was once the soft light
falling off the sun, is moving closer
to where a chair should be
have a shadow to follow it
by reaching across the table
surrounding it with a darkness
that smells from moist leaves
and the sap when this table
had corners, sides and a lid
lifted for smoke that waited
for the night, was hidden in small fires
that slowly eat their dead.
*
With just a rifle, lean, taut
and though there’s no helmet
one eye is swollen, keeps staring
which means the boots no longer move
–in such a silence you hear
a marching song, still warm
from the foundry when this toy
was molten iron and step by step
setting fires with ink from letters home
black, blacker till there’s no stars
where North should be –that
and why are you holding it so deft
helping it guide each night down
in the dew you dead still listen for
is spreading out behind this dam
half hillside, half being built
with so many unknowns
rusting in place, one by one.
