Empire of Dreams

BY CHARLES SIMIC

On the first page of my dreambook
It’s always evening
In an occupied country.   
Hour before the curfew.   
A small provincial city.   
The houses all dark.
The storefronts gutted.

I am on a street corner   
Where I shouldn’t be.   
Alone and coatless
I have gone out to look
For a black dog who answers to my whistle.   
I have a kind of Halloween mask
Which I am afraid to put on.

Simic, when he reads, has the physical trace of his past, his accent, pressing against his precise and idiomatic language. Quite the charged contrast.

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