by Charles Simic
Found this one via a recent edition of Luke O’Neill’s excellent newsletter Welcome to Hell World, which you should all subscribe to. This isn’t the whole poem, just the part I liked the most:
Death,
Meanwhile, in a strange
Part of town looking for
Someone with a bad cough,
But the address somehow wrong,
Even death can’t figure it out
Among all the locked doors…
And the rain beginning to fall.
Long windy night ahead.
Death with not even a newspaper
To cover his head, not even
A dime to call the one pining away,
Undressing slowly, sleepily,
And stretching naked
On death’s side of the bed.
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