Summertime

Posted on by Live & Learn

beach-memories-summer

Charles Simic, 78, the Pulitzer Prize winning Serbian-American poet, wrote a piece for The New York Review of Books which was published in July, 2013.  It is titled “Summertime” and is a wonderful collage of short reflections on summer. Here’s a few excerpts:

  • A wind so mild this afternoon it touches our faces as we lie in the shade like little children going to sleep.
  • Are rocking chairs in this country, I’m asking myself, being rocked on summer evenings as much as they once were? Or do they stand abandoned and motionless on dark porches across the land, now that their elderly owners tend to relieve their boredom by sitting in front of their computers?
  • To my great regret, I no longer know how to be lazy, and summer is no fun without sloth. Indolence requires patience—to lie in the sun, for instance, day after day—and I have none left. When I could, it was bliss. I lived liked the old Greeks, who knew nothing of hours, minutes, and seconds.
  • There’s something familial, deeply comforting in the sound of a pig oinking in the peace and slumber of a summer afternoon.
  • For the sweet old couple working side by side in the garden, being ignorant of what goes on in the world has been the secret of their lifelong happiness.

Don’t miss “Summertime” in its entirety here: The New York Review of Books

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37 thoughts on “Summertime”

  2. “For the sweet old couple working side by side in the garden…” I had a sudden flashback to my dearly beloved grandparents, who spent so many hours bent over rows of vegetables in the summer months, murmuring softly to one another as they weeded and pruned and nurtured the harvest that would feed their family. Simpler times….

  3. Oh, that pig oinking business cracked me up. This guy obviously didn’t grow up on a pig farm. Put a little breeze on that oink and the stench would make eyes water.

  6. He quoted Emily Dickenson,
    “If God had been here this summer, and seen the things that I have seen—I guess that He would think His Paradise superfluous,”

    Summer? Really?? Unless I’m on the beach and in the water summer is my least favorite season of the year and it’s long and it drags.

    And Oak Street beach? He slept most of the day on Oak Street beach?
    If I knew he lived here while I’m here I would have told him which beaches to go sleep all day 😉

          1. “Give me my woods and the toe stubs on roots.
            Give me the turned ankles on uneven rocks and the tumbles into the dark soil and hard earth.
            Give me gray overcast days, the full cloud cover, and the misty mornings.
            Give me drizzle, fat rain drops, and freezing rain.
            Give me my seasons, the smoky autumns, the sub zero January days and the anxious anticipation of spring.”

            – David Kanigan

    1. One thing is certain, and I have always known it–the joys of my life have nothing
      to do with age. They do not change. Flowers, the morning and evening light, music, poetry, silence, the goldfinches darting
      about …

      — May Sarton, from At Seventy

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