Butcher Shop

Sometimes walking late at night
I stop before a closed butcher shop.
There is a single light in the store
Like the light in which the convict digs his tunnel.

An apron hangs on the hook:
The blood on it smeared into a map
Of the great continents of blood,
The great rivers and oceans of blood.

There are knives that glitter like altars
In a dark church
Where they bring the cripple and the imbecile
To be healed.

There’s a wooden block where bones are broken,
Scraped clean – a river dried to its bed
Where I am fed,
Where deep in the night I hear a voice.

              – Charles Simic (1938-2023)

• Composed by Charles Simic (1938-2023), a Serbian-American poet
• Four stanzas, each stanza of four lines
• The speaker describes a butcher shop with four unwelcome images: late night light, blood-stained apron, glittering knives, wooden chopping block
• Evokes fear and horror – “late at night”, “Like the light in which the convict digs his tunnel”, “glittering knives”, “cripples and imbeciles in a dark church”, “deep in the night I hear a voice”
• Describes the butcher shop apprehensively – a scary place where cruel human act of killing animals for food is done
• Dreadful images created by similes and metaphors

Interpretation of the Poem

This poem has been composed by Charles Simic (1938-2023), a Serbian-American poet, with a dark theme of bloody sacrifice. Written in four stanzas, the poem evokes fear and horror through the dreadful images of murderous activity. These images come from an ordinary butcher shop, but there is obviously much more to it than just a common everyday activity in a butcher shop. The butcher shop is, in fact, a scary place where cruel human act of killing animals for food is done.

In the first stanza, there is an image of someone working till late at night under a single light in a butcher shop, which is likened to a convict digging his tunnel in the dark cover of the night. In the second stanza, there is an image of a hanging apron all covered in blood, which is likened to a map of the continents, rivers and oceans of blood. Similarly, the third stanza provides an image of glittering knives, which are likened to altars in a dark church where the cripple and the imbecile are brought to be healed. This third image is also detestable for it doesn’t evoke the image of a holy church visited by worshippers, but the one that is full of the helpless cripples and imbeciles. In the same way helpless are the animals who get killed in the butcher shop. The fourth or the last stanza provides an image of a clean-scraped wooden block where bones are broken and the meat is cut. And this is the same place wherefrom the poet is also fed. The poet may be saying that the meat he buys and eats is also cut upon this wooden block. But he says something more – this wooden block is “where deep in the night I hear a voice.” Now, its meaning is a matter of interpretation. Taken lightly and literally, the poet might be hearing a plaintive voice of the animal being killed inside the butcher shop – the butcher might be readying the meat for the next day’s sale. Taken seriously and suggestively, it might be a voice of self-consciousness that makes the poet realize that he is feeding upon the sacrifice of innocent animals’ lives.

This poem is dreadful because the ordinary act of killing animal in a butcher shop is associated to something suggestive of a murderous crime. This association is made by the dark images reinforced by the use of similes and metaphors.

GLOSSARY

convict (n): a person who has been found guilty of a crime and sent to prison
tunnel (n): a passage built underground
smear (v): to spread (liquid) carelessly
glitter (v): shine
imbecile (n): stupid
cripple (n): a person with a physical disability
block (n): a large piece of some solid material, e.g. wood