Eyes Fastened with Pins

Eyes Fastened with Pins 436
Charles Simic

How much death works,
No one knows what a long
Day he puts in. The little
Wife always alone
Ironing death's laundry.
The beautiful daughters
Setting death's supper table.
The neighbors playing
Pinochle in the backyard
Or just sitting on the steps
Drinking beer. Death,
Meanwhile, in a strange
Part of town looking for
Someone with a bad cough,
But the address somehow wrong,
Even death can't figure it out
Among all the locked doors...
And the rain beginning to fall.
Long windy night ahead.
Death with not even a newspaper
To cover his head, not even
A dime to call the one pining away,
Undressing slowly, sleepily,
And stretching naked
On death's side of the bed.

Simic has a very interesting way of personifying death, and it really caught my attention. He puts everything is a much different perspective than we are used to. The poem begins by describing Death as a hard-working family man in a rural town. Death becomes this father figure whom we pity and like, feeling sorry that he is out working late while the rest of his family is at home. Death is not feared in this poem as it is usually hated and cried over. The tone gets darker and more somber as the poem progresses, while Death searches for someone to take away. The tables turn as he has no one to take and is left alone and cold. It seems that the poet wants the reader to either feel bad for Death, or this is a way of getting revenge, showing that Death will not take anyone away tonight. The last line strikes me when mentioning "death's side of the bed." This reminds me of the phrase "getting up on the wrong side of the bed." The ending still puzzles me, but it seems as if Death is stuck out in the rain and cold, while someone else is laying comfortable in Death's bed. Rather than being on their "death bed," he is in Death's bed, where he can not be taken. I liked the way it makes the reader view death in different ways, possibly even getting revenge against death instead of just hating and scorning it.