Kings, here are the jewellers,
the crows. The blue sky is a scale.
We’ll weigh each seed’s dark half.
They hover. The shade of the oak
is damp and heavy. At its rim—
wick of the cricket
against the noon sun.
Farther off, the hidden brook,
meandering. Its ripples,
peas shaken from the pod,
a shy sound, barely audible…
I came to touch you.
You’ve fallen asleep in the grass.
You’ll think it’s a leaf
drifting down on your face.
The door of our house is the entrance
of a church on a day of wedding
and the glow inside is the ring
in the hand of the bridegroom.
Sunflowers,
my greed is not for gold.
Copyright Credit: Charles Simic, “Sunflowers” from The New Yorker (May 29, 1971). Copyright © 1971 by Charles Simic. Used with the permission of The Estate of Charles Simic.