the masters play blindfolded

[dahlia_moon]

I love people talking about their own writing and feedback and meta-ish thoughts on those subjects. So two links on Archive of Our Own's kudos function:

A year in kudos
in the fandom afternoon (this was linked in the first article about kudos)
 

~*~

Today's poem:

"Prodigy"
Charles Simic

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.

You can also listen to the poem being read by the author.

This poem might've come around during the last five National Poetry Month extravaganzas I did around here or not (Charles Simic has definitely been featured here before), I don't remember, but he is one of my favorite contemporary poets ever. Ever. 

Comments

[loki-onyx.livejournal.com]

I like the ambiguity of the missing king, maybe not his inbtention, but the chilling paralels with and endgame, war, and death, and the fall of the king, it was just dying to be said, I can see why you love it so much Lady J <3