Happy Birthday, Charles

Today is the birthday of America's poet laureate, Charles Simic. Born in Belgrade in 1938, he was a child of war. His family ended up in Paris in 1953, where he and his mother waited while his father moved on the New York, where they joined him after a year's time. "My travel agents were Hitler and Stalin," he has 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. ... If you came to New York in 1954, it was incredible. Europe was still gray; there were still ruins. New York was just dazzling."

They moved to Chicago where he learned English, and began to write poetry while still in high school. He's won the Pulitzer for his poetry, and last year was named the Laureate. Here's one of his poems :

Prodigy

I grew up bent over

a chessboard.

I loved the word endgame.

All my cousins looked worried.

It was a small house

near a Roman graveyard.

Planes and tanks

shook its windowpanes.

A retired professor of astronomy

taught me how to play.

That must have been in 1944.

In the set we were using,

the paint had almost chipped off

the black pieces.

The white King was missing

and had to be substituted for.

I’m told but do not believe

that that summer I witnessed

men hung from telephone poles.

I remember my mother

blindfolding me a lot.

She had a way of tucking my head

suddenly under her overcoat.

In chess, too, the professor told me,

the masters play blindfolded,

the great ones on several boards

at the same time.

And here are more of Simic's poems.