We Here, the Lucky Ones

Today's poem (see "Lovely As a Tree," March 2013, and "Dancing With the Daffodils," April 2013) is a reminder to us insular Americans that not everyone lives a wide-open life, where history is only in textbooks and the future is clean and neat and free of encumbrances:

On This Very Street in Belgrade

by Charles Simic

 

Your mother carried you

Out of the smoking ruins of a building

And set you down on this sidewalk

Like a doll bundled in burnt rags,

Where you now stood years later

Talking to a homeless dog,

Half-hidden behind a parked car,

His eyes brimming with hope

As he inched forward, ready for the worst.