Little Pins of Memory
There was a child's Sunday suit
Pinned to a tailor's dummy
In a dusty store window.
The store looked closed for years.
I lost my way there once
In a Sunday kind of quiet,
Sunday kind of afternoon light
On a street of red-brick tenements.
How do you like that?
I said to no one.
How do you like that?
I said it again today upon waking.
The street went on forever
And all along I could feel the pins
In my back, prickling
The dark and heavy cloth.
"The Little Pins of Memory" from
"The Book of Gods and Devils," copyright c.1990 by Charles Simic, reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
